Harlan Coben's Divisive 6-Part Psychological Thriller Is the Perfect Weekend Binge

Published Sep 24, 2026, 8:46 AM EDT

Jessica is a journalist, editor, TCA critic, and multimedia storyteller with a decade of experience covering pop culture, film, TV, women's sports, lifestyle, and more. She earned her degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington with a focus in creative writing before moving to N.Y.C. and getting her start at The Huffington Post. (She still misses those nap pods.) She's covered multiple film festivals, recapped some of your favorite series, worked too many red carpets to count, and even yapped on a podcast or two. When she’s not interviewing your favorite showrunner or ranking Ryan Gosling's best roles for places like UPROXX, Teen Vogue, Marie Claire, The Daily Beast, and Cosmopolitan, she’s busy being a full-time hype woman to her cat, Finn. You can find her on Bluesky and, sadly, Twitter.

Most people know Harlan Coben as Netflix's go-to guy for twisty European thrillers, but Lazarus, his six-episode Prime Video series from late 2025, flew under the radar in a way that’s, well, kind of criminal. The setup will feel familiar if you've logged enough hours in Coben's universe. A family secret, a homecoming nobody wanted, and a dead man who left behind more questions than answers. But if you burned through Missing You and are already restless for another Coben fix, this is the one that rewards you for wandering off Netflix. Sam Claflin and Bill Nighy are both excellent, the tone starts as a generational mystery and slides into something closer to horror, and it's weirder than anything else in Coben's TV catalog.

'Lazarus' Puts a Supernatural Spin on the Harlan Coben Formula

Claflin plays Joel Lazarus, a forensic psychiatrist who heads back to his family home after his father Jonathan, played by Nighy, dies by apparent suicide. That "apparent" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, because almost nothing about the circumstances surrounding Jonathan's death adds up, and Joel knows it. His father was a renowned psychiatrist with a roster of deeply troubled clients, a complicated legacy, and, it turns out, a trail of cold cases that nobody thought to connect while he was alive. Joel starts pulling at those threads almost immediately, and the show makes it clear pretty early that Joel doesn't want to find what he's looking for.

So far, standard Coben territory: buried trauma, a protagonist who can't stop digging. What makes Lazarus different is the supernatural layer that creeps in around the edges of the first episode and takes over entirely in the back half. Joel starts seeing things, visions of dead people connected to his father's practice — including his own sister Sutton (Eloise Little), who was murdered 25 years earlier in a case that went cold. The show never fully commits to explaining whether these are grief-induced hallucinations or something more paranormal, and that ambiguity is what keeps the whole thing from tipping too far into camp.

Sam Claflin and Bill Nighy Carry 'Lazarus' Through Its Darkest Turns

Image via Prime Video

Claflin is good at playing a guy who thinks he's in control long after everyone watching can see he isn't. What makes Joel interesting is that he thinks he's the detective in this story when he's really the patient. He comes home to sort through his father's death like it's just another case, and by Episode 3, he's unraveling, but still too stubborn to notice. Claflin really sells the gap between how Joel sees himself and how badly things are actually going for him.

Bill Nighy is the secret weapon here. His scenes are all flashbacks and visions, so you're watching a dead man be fatherly and reassuring while the present-day storyline is slowly revealing he was anything but. Lazarus needs you to buy Jonathan as a good man before it pulls the rug, and Nighy makes that easy — too easy, honestly.

Alexandra Roach rounds out the family as Jenna, Joel's sister, and the dynamic between the three Lazarus siblings (living and dead) is where the show finds most of its emotional weight. Kate Ashfield also turns up as the local detective working the cold cases, and the way her investigation mirrors and eventually collides with Joel's gives the middle episodes a propulsive push right when the show needs it.

'Lazarus' Quickly Gets Under Your Skin

One of the smartest things Lazarus does is stay short. Six episodes, each hovering around 45 minutes, and the pacing reflects a show that knows it doesn't have room to waste. The back half, in particular, goes to places that feel genuinely new for a Coben adaptation. Without giving anything away, the final two episodes reframe everything you thought you understood about Jonathan Lazarus and what his psychiatric practice was actually for. It's a rare thriller ending that's bleak without feeling cheap about it.

All six episodes of Lazarus are streaming now on Prime Video. Critics were split when it premiered in October 2025, but the audience response has been warmer, and it's the kind of show that benefits from going in with low expectations and coming out rattled. If you've already worked your way through Coben's Netflix catalog and assumed you'd seen every version of what he does, Lazarus is proof he has at least one more trick worth watching.

Lazarus

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