Suspicion review: Uma Thurman, Kunal Nayyar’s series leaves sharp comment on social media and PR culture-Entertainment News , Firstpost

Language: English

Suspicion starts off at an unhurried pace, almost as if director Chris Long and showrunner Rob Williams were in the mood to create a slow burn impact on the viewer with the build-up of the story. Once the narrative moves ahead, the show is engaging enough in the suspense drama it caters and the socio-cultural comment it makes, although the plot progression is at times implausible in a mainstream sort of way.

Before anything, this is not Uma Thurman’s show although the publicity blitz around the series gives that impression, playing up the Hollywood star’s mug on the posters for obvious reasons. But if you were signing in to watch the Kill Bill heroine return to form in a pulsating thriller, think again. Thurman has an important role — in fact, her character provides pivotal purpose to the screenplay — but she is conspicuously low-key footage-wise through most of what happens. Her presence as the most popular name in the cast has been underplayed. Rather, Long and his creative team let a fine cast of actors bask in the limelight as protagonists. It is a cast that does justice to roles meted out to them and also gives a dutiful nod to Hollywood’s newfound fetish for inclusivity.

The story of Suspicion is broadly based on the Israeli thriller series False Flag (originally titled Kfulim in Hebrew) and builds its drama around a high-profile abduction. The victim is Leo (Gerran Howell), son of Katherine Newman (Uma Thurman), who is CEO of a powerful PR agency named Cooper-Newman. Leo is kidnapped from a posh New York five-star by some people wearing masks that caricature faces of the British royalty. The issue gets complicated when a CCTV footage of the hotel, which has captured the abduction, goes viral and a bunch of apparently regular and unconnected English citizens come under the scope of suspicion because they happened to be staying at the hotel at that point of time. Agent Vanessa Okoye (Angel Coulby) of the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) is assigned investigation and she is joined by FBI agent Scott Anderson (Noah Emmerich) since the case concerns the teenaged son of an influential American personality who, incidentally, has been nominated by the US President for the position of the country’s Ambassador in the UK.

Establishing that brief synopsis before the pilot runs out, the focus of the script moves to the suspects who are picked up one by one for interrogation. They are a mixed lot that could form an ideal team for an abduction operation of this sort, feel Vanessa and Scott. Natalie Thompson (Georgina Campbell), who the cops arrest from the altar on her wedding day, has allegedly skimmed money from a shell company that could be owned by Cooper-Newman. Aadesh Chopra (Kunal Nayyar) is a computer wiz and hacker — someone who could have disabled the hotel’s CCTV system and then leaked the abduction footage using untraceable proxy email accounts. The third suspect, Tara McAllister (Elizabeth Henstridge) is a lecturer who had openly objected to Leo’s admission into her college because her belief system supports “meritocracy”. Picked up a while later is Tom Rhys Harries as Eddie Walker, a young British brat.

The backstories of these characters create room for necessary human relationship drama, since Natalie, Aadesh, Tara and Eddie, although hailing from different strata of society, are all in desperate need of big money. However, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear Vanessa and Scott have a more than an open-and-shut case at hand. Elyes Gabel’s entry as the sinister Sean Tilson adds fresh twist to the tale.

The suspense never gets a dark, deeper edge though the narrative is sufficiently entertaining while setting up a rough ride for the suspects. The episodes manage to keep the viewers guessing over the innocence (or lack of it) of each of the suspects till the very end, although nothing that happens in the story absolutely stuns you or is pathbreaking for the thriller genre.

More than the thriller element in store for the protagonists, what holds your attention is the effort to establish a commentative subtext. An underplayed but interesting culture clash is set up between Scott, an American white male, and Vanessa who is British, Black and female, without resorting to cliches.

The pertinent message left in the story pertains to social media and PR, the two avenues of information dissemination and opinion formation that have increasingly threatened to become omnipotent in recent years. However, while the series is effective in sending out a suitably restrained warning note, it cannot avoid being didactic while summing up the saga and stressing on the need for change.

Much of the moral questions raised are woven around the progression of Thurman’s character Katherine Newman and how the story will end for her. The actress gets limited scope but she does adequately while essaying Newman. The makers perhaps wanted to deliberately keep Newman obscured from the limelight. For one, she is too powerful a persona to be commonly visible. Secondly, PR personnel are illusionists who operate from the shadows. Thurman creates that essence effectively though one would have loved to see a few more powerful scenes written for her.

The onus of bringing alive screenplay falls on the on-screen suspects. Between them, Kunal Nayyar, Elizabeth Henstridge, Georgina Campbell and Tom Rhys Harries manage the right chemistry to keep the drama going, with Elyes Gabel adding to the mystery. Their psychological tussle and cat-and mouse games with the NCA and FBI agents is well-played out. Emmerich as FBI Agent Scott Anderson impressively cuts a colder, more ruthless picture than his British counterpart Vanessa Okoye, though Angel Coulby renders Agent Okoye a more incisive edge.

Suspicion is good enough for a one-time binge, and should regale mystery lovers who dig stories that come with a dash of cultural and societal comments. The series gets a core of topicality thanks to a socio-political angle smartly woven into the screenplay, though crisper storytelling and shorter runtime of episodes would have helped.

Watch the trailer here

Vinayak Chakravorty is a senior film critic, columnist, and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR.