The Lazarus Project review — Paapa Essiedu thrills in fun, stylish brain-scrambler

I can tell you the exact moment I stopped understanding time travel. Or at least, when I started understanding that I would never understand time travel – no way, no how, not never. It was in the Cannon cinema, Catford, in 1989, about an hour into Back to the Future II, when Doc turns to his blackboard and draws a diagram of branching timelines and loops explaining to Marty what’s going on. As my mathematically minded younger sister leaned forward, agog at this intoxicating glimpse of a new world to conquer, I began to wave a sad goodbye to a body of knowledge I had barely known existed until then, but knew in the same moment would never be mine. These days, I struggle with the mere fact that the time depicted as the future in that film – 2015 – is now seven years in the past, although it is the intimations of mortality it brings, rather than the maths, that mentally crushes me now.

But oh, how I love a timebending anything: film, play, book, TV series! Although the mechanics will forever elude me, I have learned you don’t have to understand them to enjoy the slaloming freedom that the disapplication of all known laws provides. Just go with it. It is in this spirit that I embrace The Lazarus Project (Sky Max), the new offering from Giri/Haji’s creator Joe Barton, and beg forgiveness from him and you, readers, for any misunderstandings, misinterpretations and mistakes in what follows.