The Crowded Room Episodes 1-3 review: Tom Holland’s suspense thriller is a tedious watch

Created by Akiva Goldsman, the 10-part show, the first three of which are out and will be followed with weekly releases, is based on the non-fiction book, The Minds of Billy Milligan

Tom Holland in a still from the show

The Crowded Room

Story: Danny Sullivan (Tom Holland), is apprehended by the police after a shooting at the Rockefeller Centre that did not result in any casualties. His companion during the deed, Ariana (Sasha Lane) is nowhere to be found and the cops suspect that there is more than meets the eye to Danny. They bring in investigator Rya Goodwin (Amanda Seyfried), to figure out if Danny is at the centre of more than just the shooting.

Review: For a 10-episode thriller, The Crowded Room has an agonisingly slow start. The first three episodes of the Tom Holland-led show dropped on AppleTV+ today and if you have not read up about the show or the non-fiction novel it is based on, you’d have gleaned barely anything about the plot. Pretty frustrating, indeed, considering that each of these episodes is one-hour long.

There’s Tom as Danny, living with his mother and abusive stepfather, his two pals, and the circumstances that led to him moving in with his new neighbour across the road from his place, where Ariana is also lodging, how and why he procured the gun for the Rockerfeller shooting and how he could not go through with. Also, thrown in is his budding romance with schoolmate Anabel and a lot of lighted joints. That’s about all we get in three hours of the show. So much backstory about Danny and yet we are no closer to well and truly understanding him, or what the cops think he has done.

Slow-burns really not my thing, and at the end of the first three episodes all I did was check the stream date of the last one. That’s when I am going to come back and do a binge-watch, in the hope that it picks up pace. Right now, am utterly disappointed, but it may be too early to judge the show based on this less-than-stellar start.

Verdict: It’s a slog getting through the first three episodes and the nagging feeling is that this is yet another one of those shows that was lucky to get a 10-episode run, when it didn’t need even half of that to get to the point. The performances cannot be faulted, but this is not the start one would expect from a show with such a cast.

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