Harlan Coben on how new thriller Lazarus stands apart from his previous work

If you’re in the business of bringing the Harlan Coben multiverse to the small screen, you need a big space. The American author’s thrillers are now turned, every New Year, into splashy, all-star Netflix series such as 2024 mega-hit Fool Me Once; he has a new deal with Prime Video for more adaptations; and he pumps out a book pretty much annually.

The eye-wateringly prolific 63-year-old reckons he’s now on his 37th, although it’s unclear whether that includes Gone Before Goodbye, this month’s collaborative novel with Reese Witherspoon.

Cut to... the 17-acre facilities of Space Studios Manchester. It’s spring 2024 and the sprawling complex is simultaneously home to the filming of not one but two Coben thrillers: Missing You, the Rosalind Eleazar-starring mystery which was January 2025’s Netflix offering. And, finally available to stream now, Lazarus, starring Bill Nighy, Sam Claflin and Alexandra Roach.

Like all his English-language Netflix dramas (and, yes, there are non-English language ones, too), Lazarus takes place in the UK. Albeit in a well-appointed, non-geographically specific corner of England that translates well to the streamers’ international audiences. It’s also made with his regular partners, Manchester-based Quay Street Productions, notably deeply experienced British TV producer Nicola Shindler (Happy Valley) and seasoned screenwriter Danny Brocklehurst (Ten Pound Poms).

But unlike the Netflix series, this is not a transplanted American-set novel. Rather it began as a two-page treatment. Also, “it’s the first time that, when I was starting to create it, I realised it was going to be British,” Coben tells me in one of Space’s myriad meeting rooms.

In the six-part supernatural murder-mystery, Nighy plays the titular Doctor Lazarus. He’s a famed psychiatrist clearly rich in both challenging case-histories and, well, riches: his well-appointed office, meticulously constructed on one of Space Studios’ sets, is a towering, art-deco wonder more befitting a Bond baddie. It’s seemingly the perfect setting to help his troubled patients get on with their lives – and, as it transpires in the opening scenes of episode 1, end his own.

When Radio Times visits the set, they’re deep into filming episode 3, notably a scene where Claflin and Roach, playing the children of “Dr L”, try to unpick the truth behind their father’s seeming suicide – and what that might have to do with the unsolved murders of their sister and of at least one of the good doctor’s long-ago patients.

The casting of Nighy represents more new ground for Coben: for the first time, he was the actor the writer pictured almost as soon as he’d set him down on paper. In a happy coincidence, voracious reader Nighy is also a huge Coben fan.

“That was not just a happy coincidence – I was preening for weeks afterwards!” smiles Coben, a gregarious man with the air and look of a well-fed Stanley Tucci. “But yes, it was really a thrill. I figured Bill was a long shot. But the fact that he responded to the material and knew my stuff [has] been very flattering. I sent him an advanced copy of my new book the other day, and he read it the day he got it.”

And rest assured: his early demise doesn’t mean that Coben’s first-pick actor only has a cameo. The week prior to our visit, cast and crew shot a scene featuring Claflin’s Laz, also a shrink, in conversation with his apparently late father. Which indicates that, plot-wise, we’re in even more head-scratching territory than a “regular” Coben yarn.

During our time on set, more than one member of the team mentions wanting to give this Amazon-funded Coben a different “USP” to the Netflix productions’. How would the man himself characterise that difference?

“Well, I wouldn't,” he replies. “For me as a creator, it's not like I write thinking ‘this one would be good for the Hulu market’, ‘this one for Disney’... That's just not how I think. I think about the story.”

But he will allow that, with Lazarus, he and his TV partners have switched up the type of story.

“I hate the term elevated. But the filming is different, the atmosphere is different. This is a story where the visuals are more important than most of the ones I've done. This one has an eerie quality to it. A different kind of suspense.” So, he eventually concedes, “it's a different sensibility than most of the ones I've done on Netflix.”

Those, meanwhile, keep coming. Alongside checking in on production on Lazarus and Missing You, Coben is using this trip to Manchester from his home in New Jersey to discuss the next Netflix A-lister-fest: Run Away, dropping on 1st January 2026, stars James Nesbitt, Ruth Jones and Minnie Driver. “We've had meetings on all three,” he tells me. “And a possible fourth.”

The common denominator, though, is that British setting. Being set in a nonspecific part of England, with the lifestyles glammed up and regional accents sanded down, seems designed to smooth the show’s spread around the world. Is that something Coben and his producing partners bake into the dramas?

“Not consciously. But we do recognise this is not a show that's only going to be seen on BBC Manchester [sic]. This is going to be seen in Korea and Saudi Arabia and Africa and the United States.

“But I don't know that we, as you called it, smooth. I always find the more specific I am, the more universal the appeal. If you're watching Lazarus, we've all lost somebody, right? Now, the chance that Sam’s character has to be with his father again? That's compelling. Those emotions are universal.”

Indeed. And ghost stories are even older than thrillers.

“Ha ha, yes they are!”

Lazarus is available to stream now on Prime Video – try Amazon Prime Video for free for 30 days. Plus, read our guides to the best Amazon Prime series and the best movies on Amazon Prime.

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