Suspicion 1.3: The Fifth

You may recall in my review of the excellent two-episode debut of Suspicion last week, I wondered why, though there were only four masked kidnappers of Leo Newman at the beginning, and only three suspects taken in by London police plus one murdering suspect on the loose (3 + 1 = 4), the description of the series on IMDb, Wikipedia, etc., as well the above publicity photo, say or show five kidnappers not four.  Tonight, at the very end of episode 1.3, we find out why: there is indeed a 5th suspect, Eddie Walker, who helped with the getaway but was not in the original hall of the kidnapping.  And he's a student at Oxford, where Tara (one of the three London suspects now under surveillance) happily teaches,

Ok, that's a neat development in the plot.  But it was spoiled, to some extent, by the telegraphing in the publicity photo and the description of the series that there were five suspects, when all we saw in the first two episodes were four.  This is not the fault of the creators of the series.  It's the fault of the publicity people, who were really out to lunch on this one.

Anyway, the connection between Natalie and still the only palpable bad guy Sean was interesting, and lays bare one of the best dynamics of this narrative:  the three other suspects (Tara, Natalie, and Aadesh) all seem to be so nice, in comparison to Sean, who certainly isn't.  (Too soon to tell about Eddie, who was only on the screen the last minute of the episode.)  This suggests that at least one of the connective tissues between Sean and the other kidnappers is that the other three were taken advantage of in some way, pulled into something that they had no idea was a kidnapping.  But still a little too soon to know how many of the three that happened to, if it happened at all.

And I'll round off this review with a mea culpa: last week I said that Katherine Newman, mother of Leo, was a media mogul. I somehow missed that she's a powerful PR executive -- so powerful that she's being nominated for US Ambassador to the UK.

I'll see you back here next week with my review of 1.4.

See also Suspicion: Excellent Start, But Is It Four or Five?