It’s hard not to be overwhelmed by deja vu sitting down to The Lazarus Project (Sky Max, Thursday, 9pm), a time-travel romp from Joe Barton. The screenwriter’s last series, Giri/Haji, was an intriguing mash-up of police procedural, romance and valentine to Japanese culture. (In the cathartic final episode Barton even threw in some interpretive dance for existential chuckles.)
But for his new thriller he’s gone back to the past with a formula that feels like a remix of Groundhog Day and Killing Eve. Unfortunately, it lacks the charm of the former and the dangerous energy of the latter (before it went off the rails and turned into a smug valedictory to itself).
A crack squad of secret agents who reset time whenever civilisation is about to be destroyed sounds like the set-up for a mediocre PlayStation 4 game—which, alas, is precisely how The Lazarus Project plays out
First and foremost it’s a vehicle for the charming Paapa Essiedu, the British actor who’s a familiar face from I May Destroy You and Anne Boleyn. He plays George, a hustling app developer in London who wakes one morning to find he is gummed down in a time loop. Every few months he cycles back to July 1st – sitting up in bed in shock next to his girlfriend, Sarah (Charly Clive), and then forced to watch life unfold just as it did on countless previous occasions. And what unfolds isn’t pleasant: on the heels of Covid another virus strikes—Barton wrote the screenplay before the pandemic—and this time the future of humanity is at stake.
But then George is introduced to the secret world of the “Lazarus Project”, a crack squad of secret agents who “reset” time whenever civilisation is about to be destroyed. (It’s already happened on multiple occasions.) It sounds like the set-up for a mediocre PlayStation 4 game—which, alas, is precisely how The Lazarus Project plays out. That’s despite the best efforts of an up-for-it Essiedu and of Caroline Quentin, who, as head of the Lazarus Project, comes across as doing her best impersonation of Fiona Shaw in Killing Eve.
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The ultimate problem is that time-paradox capers are old hat, with Groundhog Day having already been bowdlerised by Netflix’s Russian Doll and the recent comedy Palm Springs. And although Essiedu is clearly a star, as a follow-up to Barton’s wonderful Giri/Haji this is a let-down. I wish I could have gone back in time and watched something else instead.
