2 out of 5

Created by: Harlan Coben and Danny Brocklehurst

By the time of 2025’s Lazarus, we’re nearly ten years in to these Harlan Coben TV adaptations / creations, during which 15 or so series have aired in multiple languages, and of which several are produced / directed / co-created / etceterad by UK TV maker Danny Brocklehurst. In short: t’aint anyone’s first rodeo, likely the target viewers included, slapping Coben’s name on to promotional stuff for the show.

Looking back at my reviews for a fair chunk of these series, I’ve actually been somewhat favorable towards them… while having this general belief that most of these things are (and will be) fairly poor. I think that Coben’s writing style and genre just make me assume the projects are inevitably popcorn sensationalism, and when they do something a little outside of that, it makes a notable impression.

But, as ever, that sidesteps the fact that I watch these shows too, and whatever criticisms I have of the formulas they use for construction, they’re keeping me (and presumably others) watching, for whatever our reasons.

This holds true for Lazarus as well, and I have enough history with Coben (and Brocklehurst) to identify a distinction which sets the show on the lower tier of Harlan TV works, but maybe the first to go more into campy, so-dumb-it’s-good territory: when the shows are book adaptations, you can sense “good” or “bad” adaptations rest on how well-balanced amongst 6- or 8-episode runtimes the inevitably wacky twists are presented. When the shows are original, that line is a bit fuzzier, but it seems to hang on the tone – the more heightened, the more the ridiculousness sticks out. In both cases, you can see my tastes lean towards playing this stuff a little more tame, and less soapy; Lazarus cuts through even that judgment by just not caring. The show has a good central hook – psychiatrist Joel Lazarus (Sam Claflin) – is seeing the ghosts of patients of his recently passed also-a-psychiatrist father, Jonathan (Bill Nighy), who lead him into a web of family secrets; and the show also has a pure Coben-fuel batshit ending which works, and wrings the absolute most out of Nighy’s esteemed presence. What it doesn’t have, or ever give the viewer, is a reason for existing.

I mean, we can backpedal there from the “web of family secrets” and the ending, but it would seem to make more sense to put that reason in at the start…? In lieu of that, we jump right in to “this really matters!” drama, and Claflin is perhaps ill-cast for that, comically overacting against underwritten others who are underacting, giving a very amateur theater vibe to the whole project.

You have: core personality traits that we are sworn to are irregular, but we have no basis otherwise; familiar relationships that aren’t established; complete lack of any type of believable procedural elements – for psychiatry, for policework; “smart” characters who are willing to jump to extreme beliefs with zero evidence… Some of these things are checklists for modern twisty-turny dramas, and especially Coben ones, but there’s no veil over it here, like Harlan did the story outline and then wrote the first episode script with Danny, took his check and left, leaving scattered others to somehow get us to the finish line in six episodes.

Anyhow, Karla Crome is underutilized, Kate Ashfield looks uncertain why she’s there, and Claflin, like, went for it, but has the misfortune of a squeaky voice when he’s passionate, and boyo, it’s darling. This is not a good show. But cut from the Coben cloth of “not good” variants, it has the distinction of being especially goofy.