Episode Guide
Person of Interest – | Review Score – 2.5/5 Room for Doubt – | Review Score – 2.5/5 Strangers – | Review Score – 3/5 The Devil You Know – | Review Score – 3.5/5 What Does a Kidnapper Look like? – | Review Score – 2.5/5 Be the Gray Man – | Review Score – 3.5/5 Questions of Trust – | Review Score – 3.5/5 Unmasked – | Review Score – 2/5 Suspicion could have been a great show. On paper, the premise and initial set-up is actually quite intriguing. Unfortunately a bloated run-time, way too many plot contrivances and a really poor ending create a cataclysm of errors that are hard to ignore. For spoiler purposes I’ll try not to dive too much into those but suffice to say there is some intrigue here and the overarching ideas about society, policing and climate change are welcome. But not with such bungled execution. The plot centers on the kidnapping of a boy called Leo Newman. His mother, Katherine, is a prospective businesswoman and she fronts an important company who scramble to make sense of what’s happening. So far so good. The police deduce that the ones responsible for the kidnapping must have been at the hotel that evening, leading them to five seemingly unconnected individuals, living out their lives in the UK. Aadesh is a down-on-his-luck guy working with his father. Tara is a school teacher, Natalie works for a top business while Eddie’s past is erratic and seemingly lends itself to suggesting he’s the kidnapper. There’s also Sean, who’s on the run from the authorities for reasons unknown. When a strange group infiltrate the radio waves and broadcast out a message, telling Katherine Newman to “tell the truth”, the hunt to find Leo Newman intensifies. At the front of this search are officers Vanessa and Scott, who work together to try and incriminate one of the suspects from the UK. But are they innocent? Guilty? Or is there more going on here? As I said before, on paper there’s a solid premise here. Even writing this synopsis out for this review I’m re-reading it and find myself really captured by this mystery thriller. Sadly, a few episodes in and this show starts to spiral into a bit of a mess. I’m being careful with spoilers but some of the character and story decisions are baffling. There are a couple of deaths halfway through the season that help to spice things up but on reflection, feel like a clever ploy to keep you watching. If you do make it to the end, Suspicion has one of the most unsatisfying conclusions that you’ll kick yourself for sticking with this for so long. Sometimes these shows are redeemable through a quick binge but given Apple’s drip-fed release schedule, and critics scathing this one ahead of release (with all episodes available to watch through Apple) it’s unsurprising to see such a negative reaction to it. The visuals may be good but some of the editing in this show is questionable at best. The first few episodes are so poorly handled, whiplashing between characters and refusing to let any of these characters grow and lean into their personas. Instead, this one hits the accelerator from the word go and never lets up, eventually spinning off the track and hitting the wall. For all of Apple’s money and star power, Suspicion joins an ever-growing list of original series on the platform that’s haunted by bad writing. The story is poorly written, poorly plotted and poorly thought out. This is one to avoid.
