Prime Video is about to add one of 2025’s twistiest thriller shows

Releasing in just a few days, JOE caught up with the creators and stars of the buzzy new series.

Cementing his reputation further will be Lazarus, his new Prime Video series that premieres next week. Coben co-created the show, alongside his frequent collaborator, Danny Brocklehurst (Brassic, The Driver).

Unlike much of their work together, Lazarus is not an adaptation of a novel by Coben. Instead, it comes from an original idea by the pair.

The series also marks a first for both of them in that it includes supernatural elements.

The six-part show follows Joel Lazarus (Sam Claflin - The Nightingale, Peaky Blinders), a psychiatrist who returns home after his fellow psychiatrist father, Dr Jonathan Lazarus (Oscar-nominee Bill Nighy - Living, Love Actually), dies unexpectedly.

As Joel starts examining his father’s belongings, he begins to have disturbing experiences that cannot be explained and quickly becomes entangled in a series of cold-case killings.

This is as he and his sister, Jenna (Alexandra Roach - Nightsleeper, Utopia), grapple with the mystery of their father’s death and their sister’s murder 25 years ago.

JOE interviewed creators Brocklehurst and Coben, stars Claflin and Roach, as well as producer Nicola Shindler (Happy Valley, It's a Sin), ahead of Lazarus' release.

During the conversation, Coben (who also told us that he'd "love" to set a show in Ireland) explained how experiences in his personal life sparked the initial idea for the show.

The author said:

"On the serious side, I lost my father at a fairly young age. I miss him all the time. I lost a lot of people in my 20s and early 30s.

"And [I have] the same wish that we all have, I wish I could see him one more time, I wish I could hug him one more time, I wish I could talk to him one more time.

"So part of that was what developed the Sam Claflin and Bill Nighy moments [because] I think we all, when we're watching it, kind of wish we had that moment ourselves.

"The second thing was, I was playing tennis… I finished… I walk outside [and] across the street is a psychiatrist's office that I've taken my father-in-law to when he had severe depression.

"I started thinking about a psychiatrist's office and day after day, week after week, month after month, all the misery that's spoken in that room, all the dark secrets that are revealed.

"Where does that energy go? It must somehow almost seep into the walls, and what happens when the psychiatrist dies and it comes back out?

"I had these thoughts and ideas and I brought them to these two fine people [referring to Brocklehurst and Shindler] and we started from there."

While Lazarus does have elements of the supernatural, Brocklehurst and Coben note that they were keen not to make a gory, jump scare-heavy horror.

On this point, Brocklehurst told JOE: "I actually really like what I'd call ''grounded supernatural'. I don't like supernatural that goes too weird, but I do, as a viewer, like to watch things that are a little bit odd. I love The Leftovers, for example.

"But it was a challenge for us because our other thrillers have not gone in that direction, so we just had to make sure that we had certain rules for ourselves in terms of how we moved in and out of that element of the story, really, which was a big conversation point."

Sam Claflin and Harlan Coben at a screening of Lazarus

On this point, Coben added:

"I would not classify this in any way as horror. None of us likes jump scares, none of us likes blood, none of us likes that kind of extreme violence.

"I always preferred the Hitchcockian horror, if you will, the psychological scares. We all wanted a show where we have an unease, a 'what's going on?' or 'where am I?' aspect - the vibes, the atmosphere being really cool rather than those other things that are sometimes more associated with horror."

Speaking about this tone, Roach summed up accurately: "[Lazarus] kind of reminds me of when you're little and you go on sleepovers and you try to spook each other out by passing the torch around and being in your pyjamas and you feel your heart getting faster… that thrill of a ghost story."

As for Claflin, he was drawn to the series for its cliffhangers and twists, as well as its elements of humour and family drama.

Praising Coben, the actor told JOE:

"I mean, this particular project, the cliffhangers alone! Reading the first episode, they only sent me one initially, I got to the end and I was like: 'I need the second. I need to know what happens next, where this is going, who these people are.'

"He just has this incredible ability to write not just one twist... normally there's just sort of one twist, but his twists back and then sometimes there's red herrings that are so good…

"I think we all enjoy playing mini detectives when we watch shows, and we love being not talked down to and actually really being forced to think, and his subject matter always allows for that."

He added: "This particular project, I think, is unique in the sense that it has splashes of humour even though it's got such a dark subject matter. There's so much humour within it that it has levity.

"But then [there's] obviously the mystery behind who's been committing these murders, and the whodunnit is just so impossible to imagine at the beginning.

"It's difficult when you're shooting these things; it's always hard to know how it's going to resonate. Obviously, I know what the twists and turns are.

"The great thing again is this isn't based on one of his books, so people have no idea going into it where this is going to go, and I have a feeling it will shock a few people."

Lazarus also marks another first for Coben; it was the first time he wrote a character with an actor in mind. He told JOE:

"I've written 37 novels and we've done, I don't know how many productions together... this is the first time from the moment I had the idea and started to noodle it out that I actually had an actor in my head and it was Bill Nighy playing Doctor Lazarus.

"I think all of us started talking like: 'Maybe we can get a Bill Nighy type? Who's like Bill Nighy?' I don't think any of us dreamed [about getting him].

"Literally, we sent him the script and the next day he called me on the phone and wanted to know more about the story and was on board.

"I screeched like a little baby. They [Brocklehurst and Shindler] heard it from my house in New Jersey, in Manchester. They screeched back.

"The problem with a guy like Bill Nighy is that you have such high expectations for him. He exceeded them all, both personally and professionally.

"He was just the most wonderful guy you would ever want to hang with, be with, have on a set. He elevated everything that he did; we were all caught up in that Bill Nighy experience."

Claflin was also full of praise for Nighy and Roach, who play his father and sister in the series, before discussing the Lazarus family dynamics and how they resonated with him.

He said: "It was a joy working with both Bill and Alex. Across the board, it was a really remarkable cast, but Bill, especially, we had a two-week period where we shot all of our scenes together, so it felt like doing a stage play, the two-hander.

"There was so much back and forth, emotions were running high, and then we'd be laughing and then we'd be crying, and then we'd be screaming and then we'd be fighting.

"It was just a real challenge, physically, mentally and emotionally, but he's the kindest, most gentle human being on earth that it was just a dream come true.

"And then working with Alex, she's again such a gifted actress. Exploring the family dynamics and how they resonated was, I think, that every family has suppressed feelings and hidden traumas that they don't wish to talk about or bury under the rug. I think we can all relate to that in some capacity.

"I felt so connected to Joel. He's basically having a breakdown throughout the series, or people don't know whether he's having a breakdown.

"I think anyone in their late 30s, early 40s has sort of started having these flashbacks of their childhood and [thinking] like: 'Why am I crying walking down the street thinking about this moment that I had in childhood?'

"I don't know whether it's just an age thing or... because we have all these suppressed feelings that we've been burying for so long; they're going to spill out eventually."

Alexandra Roach and Bill Nighy at a Lazarus screening

Claflin also credits Lazarus with making him more in touch with his emotions, explaining: "It was amazing for me going on this journey with Laz because I think it opened me up, coming out the back end of it, to my own mini breakdown last summer.

"I think I was just so exhausted, emotionally drained, that it started pouring out of me in a way that I never experienced, in a way that I wish to continue learning about and exploring."

Roach said that she was also drawn to Lazarus because of its rich portrait of a family and their dynamics.

Speaking about the sibling relationship between her character Jenna, a professional tarot card reader, and Claflin's Laz, she told JOE: "You meet them in such an interesting way. The series opens, and they're reeling [from their father's death]... and they're really deep in their grief.

"Then we learn that this family have already had something awful happen to them years and years ago, and how that's changed them as people.

"Laz has gone off and lived his life and turned to science, whereas Jenna has turned to spirituality and healing and more intuition and instinct.

"So they both have very different ways in which the paths of their lives have turned out, but there's a lot of love there because of what they've been through.

"I also really like the sort of cheekiness and playfulness between them because that's believable for siblings, right?"

Throughout the season, Laz has visions of his dead father speaking to him, and he can't tell if they are real or not. This is complicated for Jenna, being the more spiritual of the siblings.

As Roach explains: "I think, for Jenna, it's quite confronting that Laz is having these experiences with their dad, and she's not a part of that.

"She's trained her whole life to be open to the unknown, and it's not happening for her.

"She has to reckon with that, and how it comes out is sometimes resentment and jealousy as she sees Laz connecting with their dad, and that's all she wants more than anything, and it's not happening for her... It's really sad."

Roach then joked: "And for me, not to have a scene with Bill Nighy, also very sad.

"He was around and we had lovely dinners, but yeah, I didn't get a scene with him.

"Maybe there's another series in it and Bill Nighy's still a ghost, and I get to talk to him this time."

Lazarus lands on Prime Video on Wednesday, 22 October.