Apple TV+’s ‘Suspicion’: TV Review
Midway through Suspicion, a character skilled at subterfuge offers a bit of advice on going undetected: Always be the gray man. That is, be generic and don’t stand out — the goal is to blend in so seamlessly that you won’t be remembered. It is advice that, unfortunately, Suspicion itself seems to have taken to heart. Aside from a finale that feels notable only for its sloppiness, this thriller is about as forgettable as they come.
Initially, it promises excitement. In the opening minutes of the premiere, Leo (Gerran Howell), the young adult son of American PR maven Katherine Newman (Uma Thurman), disappears from a luxury New York hotel after being attacked by four masked assailants. Security cam footage of the incident leaks, then goes viral, putting extra pressure on law enforcement to catch the perpetrators. Within 48 hours, they’ve pinpointed four suspects, all British citizens: financial manager Natalie (Georgina Campbell), university lecturer Tara (Elizabeth Henstridge), cybersecurity expert Aadesh (Kunal Nayyar) and trained assassin Sean Tilson (Elyes Gabel).
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All four swear they don’t know anything, and with the exception of Sean, they do seem like unlikely kidnappers — total strangers going about their ordinary lives, until they’re carried off in handcuffs to their shock and horror. (Natalie is dramatically arrested at her own wedding, leading to the incongruous image of a bride in a holding cell.) But of course each has secrets they’re not telling the authorities or each other, and of course the more we learn about them the less clear their innocence becomes. Meanwhile, the real kidnappers, whoever they may be, have issued their demands by hacking seemingly every public TV screen in America: They just want Katherine Newman to “tell the truth,” whatever that means.
Suspicion is broadly competent, in that the dialogue is serviceable, the performances unobjectionable (though those watching for Thurman should be warned she’s barely in it at all), the narrative easy enough to follow. Occasionally, it serves up some thoughtful stylistic touches. The copious use of security-cam footage serves as a chilling reminder that the mere act of surveilling someone can make them look shady, even if they’re not doing anything stranger than fidgeting in an uncomfortable bus seat. For those armed with lots of time, lots of patience and a burning curiosity to resolve the mystery, all that might be enough to sustain them through the eight-episode season.
But the show’s insistence on playing its secrets so close to the vest ultimately works against it. The suspects aren’t just mysterious but inscrutable, making them difficult to care about. (Sean is the only one who seems to have any personality at all, and that personality is “tertiary Bourne villain,” so he’s not exactly easy to warm to either.) Law enforcement, represented by British officer Vanessa Okoye (Angel Coulby) and FBI agent Scott Anderson (Noah Emmerich), share an antagonistic rapport familiar from every other drama where agents from different agencies are forced to work together.
Despite the high-stakes central premise, Suspicion lacks urgency because Leo barely registers as a person, his mom Katherine feels more like an idea of a wealthy businesswoman than a human in her own right and everyone else seems more impatient for the whole ordeal to be over than worried about whether Leo is okay.
Similarly, Suspicion takes its sweet time revealing the larger themes it’s working toward, only to fumble by groping around for too many of them at once. The series’ approach to these ideas is best exemplified by the public reaction to the kidnapping, which is both overwhelming and ill-defined. No one but the kidnappers has the faintest idea what “the truth” could even be referring to, and yet people start taking to the streets to protest Katherine. At least that one episode of Black Mirror about the prime minister fucking a pig captured some of the troll-y spirit of internet discourse. Suspicion just offers the vague idea that movements are about people wanting to be heard.
A late-season speech about the perils of disinformation feels like one of the series’ few sparks of life, not because it’s well executed but because it isn’t: It feels like one of the few moments when real emotion peeks through Suspicion‘s glossy sheen, with heavy-handed language that suggests a screenwriter working out their extreme disillusionment through their art. (A more cynical read might be that it smacks of a screenwriter grasping for gravitas through current events, but I’ll be nice.) By the time Suspicion gets there, however, it feels like too little, too late.
Suspicion‘s villains make it clear from the start that they intend to send a message that’s impossible to ignore. But most everything about the series they’re on, including the title itself, might as well be designed to evaporate from memory.
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