Suspicion is the first aggressively average thriller of 2022
Uma Thurman is a rare presence in Apple TV Plus' adaptation of Israeli suspense drama False Flag
Apple TV+’s Suspicion is, at best, a middling thriller that at least wraps up its many mysteries in a (stretched) eight-episode season. At worst, the drama criminally underuses its most memorable actor. Uma Thurman is marketed as the lead, but she appears so sporadically, she might as well be billed as a guest star. Her absence is sorely felt, because the rest of the cast is hardly a standout, which is oddly in line with the subpar narrative itself.
Thurman is saddled with playing non-emotive, rigid CEO Katherine Newman. She runs an elite PR agency, akin to Olivia Pope’s in Scandal, that helps clean up the messes of the wealthy and corrupt. Her son, Leo (Gerran Howell), is kidnapped from a New York City hotel by a group that’s wearing masks of the Royal Family members. A few days later, four seemingly ordinary, non-connected British citizens are arrested for the crime. Suspicion is mainly structured around their mission to prove they are being wrongly accused.
The premise and Chris Long’s direction have strong potential, but the show starts to lose steam pretty quickly because of a humdrum pace. The first four episodes are especially repetitive in how they set up the interrogation of the primary suspects, conducted by London police inspector Vanessa Okoye (Angel Coulby) and Noah Emmerich’s FBI agent Stan Beeman, sorry, Scott Anderson. Much like Thurman, Emmerich is unfortunately stuck with a one-note character. Coulby, on the other hand, shines with her limited material.
A lot of the visuals are dedicated to surveillance footage and spy shots via security cameras across the city. The focus on camera technology and interrogation methods are reminiscent of two other U.K.-set thrillers, Peacock’s The Capture and Netflix’s Criminal. Then again, Suspicion isn’t an original idea in the first place, as it’s based on Israeli drama False Flag.
If audiences can sustain the series’ initial crawl, the momentum does pick up in the second half as the unrelated accused Britishers are finally forced together to fight for their lives. Failing IT expert Aadesh Chopra (Kunal Nayyar), Oxford University researcher and professor Tara McAllister (Elizabeth Henstridge), bank financier Natalie Thompson (Georgina Campbell), and Leo’s fellow Oxford student Eddie Walker (Tom Rhys Harries) team up to prove their innocence. They get help from assassin-for-hire Sean Tilson (Elyes Gabel), who is suspected as the leader of the kidnapping ring.
As it turns out, all five of them were staying at the same Manhattan hotel when Leo was abducted. They also have unexpected ties to Katherine’s PR company, whether it’s through a job application, protests, or possible embezzlement. Aadesh, Tara, Natalie, Eddie, and Sean race against time and escape the cops in all the typical ways—hiding in shady locations, lying to loved ones, use of disguises.
Despite its predictability, the show finds its footing through surprising emotional connections. Disparate characters like Aadesh and Eddie form a believable friendship and Tara and Sean an obvious sexual attraction, and Suspicion also digs into their familial lives. Aadesh’s fraying relationship with wife Sonia (Mandip Gill) and Natalie’s secrets being revealed to her sister Monique (Lydia West) bring supporting characters into the limelight. Gill and West are terrific, but the latter is a breakout once Monique becomes increasingly more involved with the core group.
Suspicion would be a mindless bore if not for the somber moments shared between the various characters—and even those interactions come far too late. Natalie and Tara are the most fleshed-out, and luckily, Henstridge and Campbell’s performances are up to the task, as they’re the only two actors who make any sort of impression. Nayyar’s attempt to venture far away from The Big Bang Theory’s Rajesh as a perpetually verklempt, heavily bearded Aadesh works for the most part, even when the writing doesn’t support him.
As the show slowly unravels who is involved in the kidnapping, and to what extent, it checks off all the thriller trope boxes. There are red herrings, cliffhanger twists, shocking backstories, deaths. The drawback here is that the final reveals are too toned-down. Suspicion doesn’t spend any time making viewers care about Leo or Katherine, so the entire mission feels very low-stakes. There are bare minimum levels of intrigue, and fans of the genre might even enjoy the ride, but Suspicion has nothing to offer besides an average suspense story.