Prime Video’s Harlan Coben Thriller Is A Slick But Excessively Plotted Ride

Although his work has lived on shelves for over 30 years, the past decade has seen Harlan Coben really explode in popularity thanks to various screen adaptations of his works. Beginning with the critically acclaimed The Strangerthere have since been eight other titles with the author’s name involved, including the viral viewership hit Fool Me Once and miniseries, Safealmost all of which have been produced by Netflix.

Now, Prime Video is looking to build on its previous critical success with 2023’s Shelter with Lazarus. Much like the aforementioned Safethe new series is not an adaptation of one of his three dozen novels, but an original work created by the author and BAFTA winner Danny Brocklehurst, who previously worked on five other Coben shows and is attached to two other future series.

Led by Golden Globe nominee Sam Claflin, Lazarus centers on Joel “Laz” Lazarus, a forensic psychologist who works in a Severe Psychiatric Unit, but has his world rocked when his father, another psychiatrist, dies by suicide. As he works to process his death along with his sister, Jenna, Laz finds himself pulled into a string of cold murder cases with an unidentified connection, particularly as he begins seeing the spirits of the victims.

The setup for Lazarus‘ full is interesting enough to kick off a Stir of Echoes-like formula, with each new vision and conversation leading to a new revelation of the show’s big mystery and descent into a new layer of madness for our protagonist. But unlike the Kevin Bacon film, the series only gets so much mileage out of its premise and finds itself buried under too many twists.

Lazarus Is Breezily Paced, But Crumbles Under The Weight Of Its Unnecessary Layers

One thing Coben is inarguably known for is his ability to spin a mysterious yarn, and Lazarus certainly doesn’t break this streak. Laz’s interactions with the spirits of his father’s former patients come with the added hook of their also being connected to a series of unsolved murders, each of which efficiently threw me off of the actual culprit behind the killings.

With six episodes totaling a little under six hours, Coben, Brocklehurst and their writing team keep things moving. The show’s oscillation between an old-school cold case formula and a psychological horror drama got me engaged enough to see where the mystery was going.

But despite its smooth pace, Lazarus does start to go downhill in the final couple of episodes, which are more or less one rug pull after another to the point that you might have a hard time embracing any of the reveals. Despite promises and clues of a singular killer behind the cold cases, there become so many misdirects and red herrings that when we finally learn the killer’s identity, it’s not all that effective.

Even worse is how this leads into the ending. Without getting into spoilers, it’s clear Coben and Brocklehurst are hoping for a second season with one final big twist that leaves us with an unanswered question. However, we can see it coming a mile away, and it’s also so uninteresting that I’m not all that convinced watching it play out, particularly as it will lead to an entirely different kind of show.

The Blurred Line Between Reality & Waking Nightmare Is Fantastic

Apart from its sequel setup making the dream world feel increasingly obvious, and therefore robbing viewers of some suspense, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street remains one of the prime examples for how to deftly keep us on our toes as to what’s real and what isn’t. The decades since have seen some success, with one of my personal favorites being James Wan’s Malignant.

And that’s one major area where Lazarus is a fun and nicely thrilling time. Even in scenes in which Laz is in the room with other people, his interactions with the apparent ghostly figures there are not only intriguingly abstract, but also increasingly more unpredictable when the spirits get more violent with each other and with Laz.

The Cast Is Solid, But The Characters Are A Little Thin

As intriguing as the show’s mystery may be, one thing that Lazarus unfortunately, what works against it is that its characters don’t necessarily bring the same sense of interest. That’s not to say the performances of the cast are bad, as some are actually quite compelling to watch, particularly Sam Claflin as the deeply troubled Laz, Edward Hogg as the ever-shifty Olsen and David Fynn as the humorous-yet-sharply-intelligent Seth.

But the writing for some of the characters is a little too surface level, to the point that it lacks thematic heft. Laz, for instance, starts off the show on a very shaky note mentally that it’s not only hard to believe he’s a forensic psychologist, but that his devolution towards the verge of insanity wasn’t something that was already going to happen before the events of the series.

All in all, Lazarus is a series that feels like it only scratched the surface of the potential it had. I can’t say I’m keen on seeing a second season of the show, as it doesn’t feel like there’s much room for the plot to evolve or grow, and with the first set of episodes also not having any really great characters, I’m afraid it’s probably a one-off that lands right in the middle of thrilling and disappointing.

All six episodes of Lazarus begin streaming on Prime Video on October 22.

Release Date

October 22, 2025

NETWORKS

Prime Video

Directors

Wayne Che Yip

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  Bill Nighy

  Doctor Lazarus ‘Dr L’

Pros & Cons

• The show plays expertly with the blurred line between reality and nightmare.
• The overall mystery of the plot comes with a few nice twists.

• The final few episodes are full of one too many rug pulls, making none of them impactful.
• The characters feel a bit thinly written and lacking in development.