CINEMA
THE LAZARUS PROJECT (2024)
Season Two [Premiere]
Aired On: TNT.
Release Date: 06/09/24
Action. Drama. Fantasy.
"Is a top secret organization dedicated to preventing mass extinction events and with the ability to make time go backwards."
OUR REVIEW:
There is yet another UK-based time travel show launching its new season premiere in the US. This one, however, does not involve vanishing police call boxes, flashy screwdrivers, or scary plunger-mounted weaponry. Instead, The Lazarus Project is more of a hard sci-fi look at the moral consequences that arise from altering apocalyptic-level events. Amongst the requisite gunplay and car chases, spy-game rhetoric and back-alley smooches, The Lazarus Project more importantly presents a lush and tense story that bends the “what if” complex into “what now”.
Season one introduced somewhat everyman George (Men’s Paapa Essiedu), drafted by the eponymous top secret agency whose mission is to prevent mass extinction events – by going back in time to stop them. Instead of employing a TARDIS or DeLorean or a warp-9 slingshot around the sun, the Lazarus team uses time itself to reset back to a distinct point by tapping into an astronomical singularity: a black hole slowly approaching Earth. When George’s fiancée Sarah (Charly Clive) dies in a random accident, George selfishly uses the resources of the project to change time and save her. In this quest, George undoes much of the Project’s work. Season one ends by questioning the morality of killing many to save just one.
Season two starts with a similar bang. Due to George’s interference, as well as the singularity’s approach, life is now surviving in a three week loop, constantly resetting to one point in time – that being when George shoots fellow agent Shiv (Rudi Dharmalingam).
The Project regroups when they learn of yet another organization also dabbling in time travel. However, this other group has apparently registered success in sending someone back in time to 2012, well before that single reset point. In doing so, they cause the creation of another singularity. But their work also offers hope that the singularity can be preventatively stopped - if only this team of scientists could stop getting murdered.
Written and created by Joe Barton (The Ritual, Netflix’s Giri/Haji), The Lazarus Project explores the moral depth of good versus evil, questioning where the boundaries between those two concepts fall. Barton digs into the time reset model and gives the Lazarus agents a touch of ennui when it comes to death, particularly their own, as they all know they will be reborn again, like their biblical namesake.
Within The Lazarus Project there is no need to game the system by grabbing lottery results or seeing who wins the World Cup, rather, there is an underlying sense of doom knowing that life is only – and will always be – three weeks long. Even understanding this dread, season two moves along at 88 kph.
The Lazarus Project is an intense, well-written show that can be enjoyed time and time again.