Every time there’s a new Harlan Coben project on the horizon, I hope for it to be watchable. I mean, there was a time when I prayed that the subpar quality of the adaptations of Coben’s books would dissuade producers from greenlighting miniseries based on his stories. But as Coben keeps conquering one platform after another, I have accepted that bad reviews and low viewership are not going to affect him. I know that this sounds a little harsh, but that’s only because I have been covering adaptations of his novels for about a year now, and it has been a thoroughly depressing affair. Fool Me Once and Missing You take the top spots on my personal list of “Top 10 things you can do to ruin the first day of a new year.” Just One Look was a convoluted mess. And the less I say about Caught, the better. Since Lazarus had Sam Claflin, whose work I have greatly enjoyed, and it was giving me half a Shaun of the Dead reunion by having Bill Nighy and Kate Ashfield in the cast, I stupidly began hoping again. That said, I am not surprised that it’s yet another Harlan Coben adaptation that’s barely watchable.
Daniel Brocklehurst and Harlan Coben’s Lazarus, with the episodes being directed by Daniel O’Hara, Nicole Volavka, and Wayne Che Yip, follows Joel Lazarus, a psychiatrist for the criminally insane, as he learns that his father, Jonathan Lazarus, also a renowned psychiatrist, has died by suicide. He goes to his sister, Jenna Lazarus, to learn what compelled their father to take such a drastic step, but the only thing that Jenna has for him is one part of a suicide note with the words “it is not over” and a stool scribbled on it. Since that’s more confusing than leaving no suicide note at all, Joel goes to Jonathan’s office to process his grief there. Surprisingly enough, he is not only visited by the ghosts of Jonathan’s patients but also by Jonathan himself. Jonathan’s ghost tells Joel that he has now been tasked with solving these cold cases, in addition to Jonathan’s “mysterious” death by suicide. Initially, it’s hard for Joel to believe that this is happening, but when the ghost of his deceased sister, Sutton Lazarus, shows up at the office, he decides to dive headfirst into this rabbit hole and stumbles into a complicated web of lies, betrayal, corruption, and more.
In classic Harlan Coben fashion, Lazarus reserves the meat of the story for the end while frontloading the narrative with the most inane subplots known to mankind. The first 6 episodes are largely dedicated to finding out who killed Sutton, and for some reason, Coben and his co-writers thought that going back and forth and back again is a very compelling way of generating intrigue. While doing that, the writers try to get into themes of child abuse at the hands of religious figures and toxic romance between couples. But the exploration of these topics is obviously shallow and, hence, forgettable. Then, in the last episode, the writers try to tackle systemic corruption and something about sons becoming just like their fathers even if they don’t want to. And Coben and his team’s observations and inferences are so basic that it made me wonder how one finds the confidence to say so much even though they don’t have any idea what they are talking about. I mean, the amount of nonsensical yapping that happens throughout the miniseries is nuts. The only good thing that Coben has done via this particular story is that he has sent a strong message to therapists and psychiatrists to solve their inner demons first before sermonizing to others.
The visual storytelling of Lazarus is so inconsistent. O’Hara, Volavka, and Yip, along with the rest of the technical team, try to emulate the look and feel of prestige television shows. And then the whole thing is edited to make it look like the miniseries was stuck somewhere in the mid-2000s and has been unleashed upon the world now. I want to make it clear that I am a sucker for the aesthetics of the cinema of the 2000s. I was born into it, molded by it. So, when I say “2000s-era editing,” I don’t mean it in a derogatory fashion because it’s nostalgic for me. My issue with the way it is used here is that it’s inconsistent. Sometimes the editing is quite “normal,” and then suddenly it goes into that 2000s mode, and that’s simply jarring. I think this issue arises from the fact that this is a miniseries. If the editing was frenetic over the course of 6 episodes, it would have given viewers a headache. So, in an attempt to prevent the project from being an audio-visual overload, they tried to space out those throwbacks to the 2000s, only to make it seem like the creators couldn’t decide what tone or style they wanted to use. I guess if Coben’s books were adapted into movies, this issue could have been solved because, let’s be honest, his novels are needlessly overstuffed. If all that fat is cut out, a lean narrative might emerge, and that’ll definitely improve his adaptations’ visual storytelling too.
The performances from the cast of Lazarus are great across the board. Shaun of the Dead alum Bill Nighy and Kate Ashfield are straight-up amazing. Alexandra Roach, Jack Deam, Karla Crome, Roisin Gallagher, David Fynn, and the rest of the supporting cast are all splendid. That said, if Sam Claflin wasn’t in the lead, this miniseries would have become unwatchable. Claflin acts like his life is actually on the line. He is exquisite during the quiet moments, where he has to act through just his eyes and body language. When he has to turn up the volume, you can feel the pain that he is experiencing. Even when he has to run, he exudes an odd mixture of determination and desperation. I mean, Claflin is so good that you almost forget that he is a part of such an underwhelming project, and in my opinion, that’s great. I don’t think anybody is reading a Harlan Coben novel and being struck by this feeling to adapt it. Some of his previous adaptations have been hits, which is why producers are drawing from this well until it runs dry. And it’s fine if famous artists want to jump on this bandwagon to make a quick buck. I just hope that they are allowed to flex their creativity and skills in the process. Because I’ll forget about Lazarus in a couple of days, but I’ll always remember this Sam Claflin performance.
