Lazarus Recap Episode 1: Sam Claflin stars as a forensic psychiatrist in a Harlan Coben mystery
- Cherish
- 17 hours ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 5 minutes ago
Harlan Coben’s Lazarus Episode 1
Harlan Coben’s Lazarus started in 1998, when a teenage boy saw a masked male running out of his sister Sutton’s room. Eighteen-year-old Sutton had been murdered. The boy, Joel, called Laz, ran to his father’s fancy office. And there we caught our first glance of Bill Nighy, whose Dr. Lazarus, a renowned psychiatrist, became the second death in the show’s first few minutes.
I’m going to be honest with you. I struggled with watching this first episode, the first time that I watched it. I appreciate the artistic intent of the frequent flashbacks. For example, if I looked at the funeral scene as a standalone scene, that spoke eloquently of grief and cyclical tragedy. The way that the camera moved slowly through the grown-up faces and showed them as teenagers, attending Sutton’s funeral, and now Dr. Lazarus’s funeral, was a nice touch. But the episode as a whole also felt like it was missing a light touch that could have lifted some of its gloom. It looked and felt dark overall. Perhaps that was what they were going for, given the subject, and if so, okay. To be fair, there were moments of levity, particularly with Laz’s friend Seth and other sister Jenna.
I also felt a bit of anxiety when I thought perhaps there was a horror element to this, when Laz realised that the lady he conversed with, had an impromptu therapy session with inside his father’s office, was a murder victim who died over 20 years ago. Horrors are not my jam. I almost stopped watching right then and there, but decided to stick it out. Was it worth it? Yes.
Twenty five years after his twin sister Sutton’s death, Joel Lazarus (Sam Claflin) had grown up to be a forensic psychiatrist. He was in a Secure Psychiatric Unit, about to meet his patient, a serial killer named Arlo, when his father Dr. Lazarus, with whom he was estranged, called. He ditched the call and went on to do his job.
Arlo was not happy when Laz told him he could not get him out. He spoke of conversing with God, of being told that Laz could not be trusted. He claimed he asked God to punish Laz, and that God said He would.
With this eerie encounter still in his head, Laz took a phone call from his sister Jenna, who told them their father died. He shot himself in his office. A shocked Laz stared at Arlo, who was being led away by the guards; Arlo looked back at him.
Laz reunited with Jenna at their childhood home, where he had frequent flashbacks of the day Sutton died. He struggled to process his fathers suicide. Neither Laz nor Jenna even knew that Dr. Lazarus owned a gun. The note that he left was strange as well; ‘It’s not over’, along with a drawing of a low, three-legged table.
There was also a newspaper clipping about Sutton’s death on his desk. Dr. Lazarus never quite got over the death of his favourite child. The news that reported on his death also mentioned Sutton.
Laz was in a place that held too many memories. One of the rooms had boxes of his fathers things. There was a box of tapes, and since Dr. Lazarus was also a psychiatrist, I assumed these were at least some of the session recordings that his secretary Margot mentioned. Laz went to bed and started listening to them.
Laz’s childhood friend, Seth, now a cop, reached out, and they went to the local bar Rosie Q’s where Laz’s ex-wife Bella worked. Laz may have come to terms with the end of their marriage, which happened when they were both too young, but it looked like there were at least a few lingering feelings there. Laz kept (intentionally) forgetting Bella’s husband’s name; for his part, Paul insisted on calling Laz, Joel, which no one except Margot addressed him as. Seth was into Jenna, who was into auras and energies of the universe and such.
It was to Seth that Laz turned after the strangest thing happened to him at his father’s office. Whilst he was there, he poured himself a drink and sat on his father’s chair. In walked a woman named Cassandra, and though Laz tried to interrupt her, to tell her that he was Dr. Lazarus’s son and that Dr. Lazarus was dead, Cassandra would not let him. She plopped down the couch and started telling him about how she had been having those thoughts again. ‘The murder ones.’
She was clearly not a patient he could just send on her way, so Laz sat down and started listening to her. Cassandra’s thoughts were of her boyfriend Neil, dead in front of her, and she felt nothing. Laz carefully asked if these were memories; Cassandra said they were not.
Cassandra trembling, saying that Neil warned her not to be late, spoke of a woman in an abusive relationship. Then, Cassandra said she was also being stalked by another man. In her mind, she killed him, stabbed him and felt nothing.
Cassandra went to get a drink; she knew the large globe ornament was a hidden bar so she must have been at Dr. Lazarus’s office at least a few times in the past. She offered Laz a drink; he looked like he was about to decline, since he fetched himself a drink just before she walked in, but his drink was suddenly not there. Cassandra finished her drink rather quickly, and when Laz stood up to get her a refill, she was gone.
Who was Cassandra? Laz did not get a last name, and Margot claimed she could not recall her. The patient files were old school folders, no database that could be searched quickly. Laz patiently went through them, and found a patient named Cassandra Rhodes, but her last session with Dr. Lazarus was way back in 1999, about a year after Sutton died.
Laz drove to Cassandra’s address, where the new owner told him he could not have spoken with Cassandra the day before, because she died, was murdered, over 20 years ago. A shaken Laz did a quick online search. Cassandra was indeed strangled, and her killer was never found.
With Margot refusing to discuss this patient with him, or Sutton’s murder, Laz went to Seth and asked him to find out what happened. The murder was only four miles away, and it was odd that it happened a year after Sutton’s murder, and that the culprit here was never found too. Seth reluctantly got Laz Cassandra’s police file.
Laz also tried to speak to Jenna about his strange experience with Cassandra, after confessing that he went to Sam Olsen’s house. Sam was arrested for Sutton’s murder, and later released due to lack of evidence. Jenna told Laz that even their father did not believe in Sam’s guilt. Laz asked if Cassandra thought people could actually see dead people. Jenna, daughter of and brother to psychiatrists, knew about bereavement hallucination, but that was not what Laz was talking about, and he found he could not quite tell his sister what happened.
His presence at his childhood home also attracted the attention of Bella’s 15-year-old son Aidan, whom both Laz and Jenna thought was weird. The kid was a bit creepy. He told Laz he wanted to go to Dr. Lazarus’s funeral because funerals fascinate him. He said Laz shouldn’t have come back, that he had a bad feeling. Paul was not at all gracious when Laz drove Aidan home, so at least some of the kid’s manners must have been learned from him.
Following a quick meetup with Seth at Rosie Q’s, Laz felt that someone was following him, and decided to confront whoever it was. He chased the stalker all the way to the cemetery, and ended up in front of Sutton’s grave. Someone had decorated it with fairy lights and flowers. The man who followed Laz, who led him to the grave, was Sam Olsen, the prime suspect in Sutton’s murder.
It was a struggle for me to get through this first episode, but in the end, what we have is what we have come to expect from a Harlan Coben mystery, a twisty, engaging tale. It was nice to see Sam Claflin again, and even those brief glimpses of Bill Nighy were reminders of his presence as an actor. Colder days are mystery days for me, and I am glad to have this to add to the queue.
Rating: B
Strays
🔍The Windmills of Your Mind was the song that bookended this episode.
🔍There was a subtle lighting change when Laz was alone in his father’s office (darker) and when he was with Cassandra (soft, slightly lighter lighting).
🔍There was a detective named Alison whom Seth thought was Dr. Lazarus’s lover.
🔍Seth said Cassandra was ‘batsh*t’ and that her boyfriend Neil Croft was never charged for her murder because he went AWOL.
Episode Writer: Harlan Coben and Danny Brocklehurst
Episode Director: Wayne Che Yip
Original Release Date (Prime Video): October 22, 2025