Suspicion Ep 1 and 2 review: Uma Thurman, Kunal Nayyar’s thriller series kicks off on a tepid note

A thriller’s supposed to keep you on the edge, it’s constructed in a way that leaves you wanting more. A cliffhanger’s meant to irk you and make you wait with bated breath to find out what happens next. None of that holds true for Suspicion.

Key art | Apple TV+

Suspicion

Story: The premise of Suspicion is promising — four people have to bend over backwards to prove their innocence in the abduction of a media mogul’s son.

Review: The Apple TV+ show’s first two episodes premiered last week, introducing the key characters: the supposed perpetrators, the affected party played by Uma Thurman (Katherine Newman) in a blink-and-you-miss it appearance, and the dedicated investigators National Crime Agency and FBI agents (Angel Coulby and Noah Emmerich) looking into this high-profile case.

The first episode opens to the aforementioned kidnapping where three individuals wearing caricature masks of the royal family ambush an unsuspecting 20-year-old Leo Newman in a hotel corridor and stuff him in a suitcase. My takeaway from this is to keep your eyes and ears open at all times because even the safest of safest places can be the right opposite.

Anyway, the video of the kidnapping goes viral on the internet, people all over the world — without once questioning the act within this video — are deriving unreserved pleasure from it. But that really is how viral videos work, don’t they? There are so many disaster clips floating all over the internet, there’s a whole Instagram page dedicated to drunken antics and people getting brutally hurt and so much more.

Then the story shifts to four different people who seem to have no connection to each other except for the fact that they were in New York, residing in the same hotel as Leo. 

Aadesh (Kunal Nayyar) is unemployed, regularly humiliated by his wife’s family for this, and together the couple has next to no money to their name. When his wife does discover that he’s siphoned off all their savings and lied about his trip to New York, one does start believing that something is sketchy about him. Aadesh though covers up his tracks, claims that it was him dreaming big for their future, that he went all the way to New York to pitch himself as a cyber security expert. A weak explanation but the wife buys it.

Next is Oxford professor Tara (Elizabeth Henstridge), she has a broken marriage, a vindictive husband hell-bent on smearing her reputation (typical) and an 11-year-old daughter. Her outspoken streak — a believer of meritocracy, she once protested against Leo’s admission to the university — plays unfavourably against her. 

Then there’s Nat (Georgina Campbell) who's in possession of an obscene amount of American dollars and a burner phone that’s flooded with messages from Sean (Elyes Gabel). Sean is on the run but from what exactly we will be told in the upcoming episodes. So far, he only has a link to Nat but even that doesn’t explain how the four of them were narrowed down as the only suspects in this abduction.

Parallelly, the real kidnappers, under the garb of anonymity, at least confirm that Leo is alive but in order for them to set him free, they want Katherine to "tell the truth." 

The contents of these two episodes could have easily been condensed into one to avert the story from being a drag. There’s really nothing really outstanding about the show so far, it brings nothing novel to the table but amply takes inspiration from thrillers and conspiracy dramas of yore. Like the contrasting good cop-bad cop interrogation methods of Anderson and Coulby’s characters.

Verdict: A thriller’s supposed to keep you on the edge, it’s constructed in a way that leaves you wanting more. A cliffhanger’s meant to irk you and make you wait with bated breath to find out what happens next. None of that holds true for Suspicion.

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