Deja vu or a repeat? You may have seen this time-loop thriller before
Time doesn’t repeat itself. Deja vu isn’t real. it just feels like that, because of all the time-loop dramas on telly this year. The Lazarus Project (Sky max) takes the concept that was explored so movingly in BBC2’s Life After Life, and turns it into a hackneyed sci-fi thriller.
There’s a romantic sub-plot, too, though it’s not half as clever as The Time Traveler’s Wife on Sky Atlantic… and less sharp and shocking than Russian Doll on Netflix.
Paapa essiedu plays George, a software whizz who is aghast to realise he’s reliving the past few months of his life. A sarcastic special agent called Archie (Anjli mohindra) hails him in the street and explains what’s happening to him: ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ she says, ‘but you’re a mutant.’
Showing George around her HQ, Archie educates him. ‘We’re a topsecret multinational organisation dedicated to preventing and undoing mass extinction events via diplomatic, scientific or militaristic means,’ she says, speaking at a speed usually reserved for the terms and conditions in credit card ads.
Archie’s boss, Wes (Caroline Quentin), explains more succinctly that her agents have saved the world about 20 times since first averting nuclear holocaust in 1963. They have a machine that resets time, sending the planet back to the previous July 1, to help humanity avoid mistakes. Wes speaks entirely in cliches... but then, if you’d lived 20 times over, everything would seem like a cliche to you.
Like a sub-standard episode of Doctor Who, half the show consists of characters staring urgently at computer screens or standing next to unspecified lumps of futuristic machinery, frantically explaining the plot to each other.
The twists are so blatant and unsurprising that The Lazarus Project is almost like watching a repeat — the worst kind of time travel. it did build to an action sequence, with a chase between a camper van and a motorcycle that was so silly it became entertaining.
George discovered he was a crackshot with a pistol when leaning out of a high-speed vehicle. Perhaps in a previous lifetime he starred as a cop in a 1970s U.S. comedy like The Dukes Of Hazzard. Yee-haw, go get them good ol’ boys, George!
As the world ended and Wes hit the restart button again, we glimpsed the face of a renegade Lazarus agent with a genocidal grudge. He looked very like Tom Burke, from BBC1’s The musketeers and Strike. That makes the second episode worth a look.
Actress Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, who plays michelle in Derry Girls on C4, was travelling back in time on The Real Derry (C4) to explore how the Troubles divided the city, and how it is healing. She opened with a snappy line: ‘This city is so good, they named it twice. Catholics call it Derry, Protestants call it Londonderry.’
Then she went for a pint with her Derry Girls co-star, Saoirsemonica Jackson, and the hour promised to bristle with wisecracks. But it takes a nimble presenter to navigate through such sensitive terrain, and O’Donnell proved flat-footed.
Attempting to cross the sectarian divide, she blundered into a Protestant pipe band rehearsal. ‘i thought i’d just walk in and catch flames,’ she joked, before asking a crass question about the Bloody Sunday anniversary that stunned the room into simmering silence.
‘This city is still held hostage by its complicated history,’ she concluded. it was a gauche and witless observation, made all the worse by the fact that Derry Girls reflected the Troubles so sharply without ever making politics the focal point.
SCOLDING OF THE NIGHT: The dirt and the dinginess in a Thai-themed Loughborough guesthouse enraged Alex Polizzi on The Hotel Inspector (C5). ‘You are not managing this place, you are being dragged along in its wake,’ she fumed at the owners Barat and Hasmita. What a temper she has!