LONDON: Conspiracy thrillers have to walk a fine line: Give away too much and there’s no reason for viewers to keep coming back, but give away too little and you leave audiences feeling a little cheated out of two hours of their lives. “Suspicion,” a new series on Apple TV+, struggles to find a balance between saying too much and nothing at all.
In the first of the two episodes available at the time of writing, we meet four (apparent) strangers, all of whom have recently returned to the UK from New York. Despite their very ordinary seeming day-to-day lives, each is suddenly blindsided by an international investigation into a high-profile kidnapping. Could these ostensibly normal folk, in fact, actually be a gang of criminals taking part in a coordinated attempt to snatch the son of a prominent US media mogul? Or could they simply be unwitting, unknowing participants in a convoluted web of conspiracies centered around one of their number — the very obviously shady Sean Tilson (Elyes Gabel).
In the first of the two episodes available at the time of writing, we meet four (apparent) strangers, all of whom have recently returned to the UK from New York. (Supplied)
In the second episode, we learn more about the potential kidnappers: Tara (Elizabeth Henstridge), Natalie (Georgina Campbell) and Aadesh (Kunal Nayyar). Each has their own convoluted reasoning for being in New York, and as investigations into the kidnapping continue, we learn that this group of seemingly unrelated individuals may not be as estranged as we’re initially led to believe.
So far, so run-of-the-mill mystery thriller, then. And… well, that’s it — for two whole episodes. Or, to put it another way, viewers will find themselves two hours in and no further forward than they were after watching the trailer.
That’s not to say there’s nothing of note here. After all, it’s great to see Nayyar in a role outside of “The Big Bang Theory” and to watch Henstridge do something other than “Agents of Shield.” And it’s always a pleasure to see Hollywood heavyweight Uma Thurman in anything — even for as brief a time as she’s in “Suspicion.” But whether such curiosities will be enough to sustain audiences sufficiently that they feel moved to give this show the benefit of another episode, remains to be seen.