Lazarus review: This supernatural mish-mash should've stayed a cut-and-dried thriller

The Harlan Coben book-to-TV pipeline has become quite the well-oiled machine over the years. While his various Netflix shows may not be the stuff of five-star critical reviews, fans love them, they're produced at pace and they satiate that thriller itch. What more can you really ask for as a casual TV viewer?

Now, Coben has turned his attention to creating another Prime Video series, partnering once again with BAFTA-winning Brassic creator Danny Brocklehurst – the pair have worked together on the likes of Safe, The Stranger and are set to bring us another Netflix show, Run Away, with yet another star-studded cast.

But while it's easy to wax lyrical about the unquestionable success of Coben's expansive television universe, his latest offering, Lazarus, will likely be forgotten almost as soon as you've finished watching it.

The series follows Sam Claflin as Laz, a forensic psychiatrist who has gone about his life suppressing his emotions by throwing himself into work. That all catches up to him when, one day, he receives the tragic news that his father, Dr L (Bill Nighy), has died by suicide. That in itself would be enough to deal with, but this being a Coben thriller, there's clearly more to the story...

We see Laz become subject to a series of strange experiences once he sets foot in his father's office, originally in the pursuit of answers surrounding his death. These apparitions see Laz take the form of his father in these visions, witnessing how Dr L's various therapy sessions and personal moments played out. They give insight into his patients, their life problems and also pave the way for some cold-case investigations.

With his childhood best friend working as a detective sergeant, Laz starts ingratiating himself into various cases, discovering bodies and eventually having to come clean about the fact that he's seeing ghosts.

The people around Laz seem to take it in their stride, though, begging the question of whether Laz has demonstrated similar behaviours previously. We glimpse snippets of his past through the exploration of the tragic night of his twin sister's murder. There are still questions that remain 25 years later and it seems, right after the death of his father, everything has reached one dramatic crescendo...

We're figuring out everything and finding out details through Laz, who veers on the side of being an unreliable narrator. The problem is, there are just too many gaps in our knowledge of him and his past to really pin him down as a character, or give us a reason to care about him. Aside from a pained father-son relationship and the blame of his sister's death being shifted onto a young Laz, we don't see anything of his inbetween years. So, we're never really sure if Laz seeing dead people is a regular occurrence that should be swept under the rug or not...

It doesn't help that this is far from Claflin's best performance – his portrayal of a grieving son lacks serious nuance – but the problems within Lazarus really lie with its clunky writing, languid pacing and attempts at adding in horror and supernatural elements into what should've stayed a cut-and-dried thriller. It's what Coben is known for, after all.

The premise of the series may initially seem promising, but Lazarus gets too caught up in many different investigations, characters and narratives, before attempting to pull everything together for a climactic finale that, instead, falls flat.

On top of trying to deal with the loss of Laz's father and figure out Dr L's state of mind in his last days, the series also throws up storylines relating to murder, infidelity, stalking and addiction, to name a few. With all this coming on top of the ghosts, visions, flashbacks and Laz's histrionics, everything just leans way too into the melodrama.

It'd be a different story if the melodramatics paid off and we had a pulsating storyline, intriguing characters and cliffhangers that genuinely left us guessing – Lazarus does try, but it just falls short on all of the above.

The handling of suicide and the grief-ridden aftermath of it initially does strike a chord, but while there are a handful of genuinely heartfelt scenes, the final episode undoes all the impact that having such a storyline at the heart of the series might've provided. Without giving away any spoilers, when all is revealed and the truth becomes (somewhat) clear, you'll be left in as much of a state of confusion as you were before the denouement.

The season ends on a note that tees up a potential sequel, but with these six episodes proving to such an unsatisfying watch, I'll be plain: there really is no need for any more.

Lazarus premieres on Prime Video on Wednesday 22nd October – 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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