The Lazarus Project, review: this time-travelling sci-fi thriller should quit while it's ahead

The opening 15 minutes of The Lazarus Project (Sky Max) are great. App developer George (Paapa Essiedu) wakes up in bed with his lovely girlfriend, Sarah (Charly Clive), then goes off to the bank where he successfully applies for a loan to launch his business. They get married, Sarah gets pregnant and all is going swimmingly until there’s a global pandemic (no, not that one) and everyone starts getting sick.

And then… George wakes up again and realises he’s reliving the previous six months over again. He acts as a normal person would: by freaking out, and trying to convince his girlfriend of what’s happening. She reacts like any other normal person would, by concluding that he’s gone mad.

Unfortunately, it goes a bit downhill from here, despite the writing talents of Joe Barton (Giri/Haji). Long story short: George has a genetic mutation which means he has the ability to recall “time jumps”. These are the work of a secret organisation called The Lazarus Project, which can turn back the clock in order to undo “mass extinction events”.

Like all time-travel stories, it’s best not to think about any of this too hard. It’s best, in fact, to concentrate on the excellent performance from Essiedu, who brings out the comedy where he can but also the drama; the kicker is that time can’t be reversed to avert personal tragedies, no matter how much George needs that to happen.

The show attempts to play around with the thriller tropes, but their presence just leaves you with a sense of déjà vu. A Bond-style control room where a formidable female boss (Caroline Quentin) stares up at a bank of screens? Kristin Scott Thomas did that in Slow Horses. A car chase (admittedly a good one), TVs in the background of bars showing news reports of a killer virus, a stolen nuclear warhead, sinister foreign powers − it all feels wearily familiar.

Talking of weary: Anjli Mohindra is a study in ennui as Archie, a Lazarus agent. Presumably, she is conveying the tiredness of someone trapped in a loop, but it sucks the life out of her scenes. When George asks her how they control this whole time-travel gig, she sighs: “Do you happen to have a degree in quantum physics, by any chance? No? Really no point in my trying to explain it to you then.” And when he asks if they could use their powers to go back to, say, London in the 1800s, she snaps: “I’m a brown woman, why the f--k would I want to?” which seems like a fairly personal issue in comparison to saving the world from extinction.