Lazarus, on Prime Video

Dr. Joel "Laz" Lazarus is seeing ghosts, but at least they shouldn’t linger longer than fifty minutes. Apparently, he is experiencing visions, or something, from his late father’s life. Dr. Jonathan Lazarus was also a shrink, but his office was clearly not a safe space. Some of the sessions were rather intense, but they might help Laz identify his father’s killer, since his ghost can’t, or won’t explain directly. Regardless, each visit to his late father’s office brings new questions and often further family angst in Harlan Coben & Daniel Brocklehurst’s six-episode Lazarus, which premiers today on Prime Video.

Old Man Lazarus was supremely self-confident and he never owned a gun, so Laz considers his supposed suicide highly unlikely. However, everyone knows the senior Lazarus took the childhood murder of his daughter Sutton especially hard, because she was his favorite. Of course, the cops know all about Sutton’s murder, especially since DI Alison Brown is an old friend of the late doctor and DS Seth McGovern is the other Dr. Lazarus’s childhood buddy. In fact, McGovern still carries a torch for Laz’s other younger sister, Jenna, a psychic, who is quite offended that the ghosts come to Laz instead of her.

It works differently for old man Lazarus, who just walks up to Laz to start another conversation from beyond the grave. Yet, in most cases, Laz takes his father’s place in conversations from the past, experiencing them through his eyes. Frankly, the first time it happens, he simply assumes he is talking to a patient who is too crazy to tell him from his father. However, he soon learns Cassandra Rhodes is dead—murdered in fact.

Frankly, Laz is probably a little too confiding about the ghost business, especially to McGovern. Of course, he will eventually need some kind of reason to explain finding a corpse that has been hidden for over a decade. Meanwhile, Sam Olsen, the original suspect in Sutton’s disappearance makes a suspicious habit of walking around the late Dr. Lazarus’s office at all hours of the night.

Lazarus is not exactly horror per se, but it has enough of the supernatural and uncanny to feel appropriately atmospheric for October viewing. Frankly, the first five episodes are addictively bingeable. Coben and Brocklehurst dexterously dangle a juicy new cliffhanger-revelation at the end of each episode. Unfortunately, the concluding sixth installment plays out like it was conceived to disappoint, if not outright enrage, everyone who invested nearly fives hours of their lives in the Lazarus kin.

Frankly, five out six is not bad, especially for an anthology, but a weak dismount definitely hurts a thriller like Lazarus. Still, Sam Claflin delivers some of the best work of his career as poor Laz, whom Coben and Brocklehurst truly put through an emotional wringer. Each episode he has multiple freakouts, breakdowns, and existential crises.

Yet, weirdly, Bill Nighy (Claflin’s co-star in Their Finest) largely slouches his way through the series, turning the old doc into a bizarrely disinterested ghost. Instead, David Fynn supplies most of the sly sarcasm, as well as nebbish nervous energy as the rumpled McGovern. Jack Deam is also ferociously menacing as Arlo Jones, Laz’s criminally insane patient, who might somehow be mixed up in this mess, even though he is confined to a maximum-security mental facility.

The set-up is first-rate in Lazarus, but the last act face-plants. Still, there are many colorful supporting performances that make the rest of the series so grabby, including Sianad Gregory and Rupert Yuen as Rhodes and another agitated (and deceased) former patient. Plus, the use of Rumer’s torchy rendition of “Windmills of Your Mind” as constant motif further elevates the haunting atmosphere. Recommended for the stylish ride rather than the destination, Lazarus starts streaming today (10/22) on Prime Video.