Suspicion (Season 1) FInale: Truth

Excellent finale of Suspicion on Apple TV+.  Lots of answers to questions, with some big questions remaining.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Here are some of the answers:

1.  What Katharine did wrong in suppressing Eric Cresswell's report in the 1990s was not only delay the world's awareness of the dangers of climate change, but subvert the very notion of truth itself.  That's about the biggest mea culpa I've ever seen in a TV series or a movie.  She's responsible for Trumpism, including the lies about COVID, and Putin's spewing of lies about his monstrous invasion of Ukraine.  None of that is specifically said in the finale, but the undermining of truth has had those, and other, baneful results.  It's not as if that didn't happen before what Katherine did -- propaganda is as old as humanity, and other monsters like Hitler used it very effectively and disastrously against the world.  But truth has certainly taken a beaten in this current world of ours, and Katherine is responsible for that?  Wow!  I'm not sure if that's just a little too ambitious for this finale, or way over the top.

2. Of all the original group of suspects, it looks as if Aadesh was the only one totally innocent at the end of the finale, right?  That's a nice piece of work.  So, let's see: Natalie killed Martin, Sean is a hired killer (more on him in a moment), Tara (Cresswell's daughter) was responsible for the whole kidnapping plan in the first place, and Eddie was never part of the kidnapping -- he's a cop*.  All in all, a nice piece of whodunnit work.  *Which means, as ns2110theonly pointed out to me on YouTube, that Eddie's innocent too!

3. Also a very good twist is Leo being responsible -- part of the conspiracy -- for is own kidnapping.

Let's get to some questions:

Actually, they all revolve around Sean.  Who sent him that huge amount of money that he was justifiably smiling at as it came through on his phone at end?  Katherine?  Probably ... though I wouldn't rule out some other nefarious group we don't quite know about. And ... he seemed to be a pretty good shot.  Was he deliberately trying to stop Eddie but not kill Eddie when Sean shot him? If I had to bet on this, I'd say, yes.

Questions like that are grist for a second season, which I'd definitely see.  The first was a really flavorful, strong cup of tea.

See also Suspicion 1.1-2: Excellent Start, But Is It Four or Five? ... Suspicion 1.3: The Fifth ... Suspicion 1.4: Surprises and Invincibility ... Suspicion 1.5: Tara and Sean ... Suspicion 1.6: Martin, Sean, and Tara ... Suspicion 1.7: The Mystery Continues

 

Suspicion 1.7: The Mystery Continues

Another excellent episode -- 1.7 -- of Suspicion, which is still managing to keep us in the dark about who kidnapped Leo.  That's an impressive accomplishment, after seven episodes.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

The big development happens at the very end of this episode, when Natalie puts a bullet in Martin, which presumably ends the chance of his series-upending reveal.  She's still understandably aggrieved about the murder of her sister, and shoots Martin because he says he didn't mean for anyone to die in that interaction that killed Natalie's sister.   Yes, totally understandably, and it serves the crucial purpose of keeping us in suspense about who the ultimate villain is in this compelling mystery.

Before then, we learn in detail that climate change -- or the failure to do anything about it -- is what the kidnappers have against Katherine.  Eric Cresswell wrote a report in the 1990s that warned about it, but Katherine had a role in suppressing it.  This is interesting, but of course still doesn't tell us who did the kidnapping.

And it continues to look like none of the suspects did it.  Next week, if IMDb's information is correct, is the eighth and final episode.  There's still no word if the series is being renewed.  It would be wild, wouldn't it, if we still don't find out who did the kidnapping next week.  There's been an increasing tendency, over the years, for television series not to keep viewers hanging on too long for the resolution of its fictional mysteries.   I'm about split, 50/50, on whether I'd like to get an answer on Apple TV+ next week.

See you back here then with my review.

See also Suspicion 1.1-2: Excellent Start, But Is It Four or Five? ... Suspicion 1.3: The Fifth ... Suspicion 1.4: Surprises and Invincibility ... Suspicion 1.5: Tara and Sean ... Suspicion 1.6: Martin, Sean, and Tara

 

Suspicion 1.6: Martin, Sean, and Tara

An excellent episode of Suspicion began streaming yesterday on Apple TV+ -- 1.6 -- even if it didn't really move the whodunnit narrative very much forward -- that is, until the very end of the hour.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

We already knew that Martin Copeland was apparently some kind of bad guy, likely (I thought) behind the kidnapping (see my review of episode 1.5), so it wasn't too big a shock to see him waiting in that car for Sean.   But that scene did show us Sean working together with or for Martin, so where did that leave us?  Was Martin behind the shooters who killed Monique and drove all our suspects including Sean into hiding? If they were working for Martin, did they have orders not to shoot Sean?  If not, if the shooters weren't working for Martin, then whom were they working for?

It was fun to see our suspects dressed and hair cut to look very different, to elude police.  They all looked great.  And Sean's relationship to Tara continues to be an intriguing mystery.  I certainly got the impression that he was tempted to get into bed and wake up Tara even if that made him late for his meeting with Martin, but he couldn't do that with someone else sleeping right next to her.

And what was going on with that boot that he picked up and seemed to hold so ... lovingly.   I assume that boot was Tara's and Sean is not a foot fetishist.  So ...

Suspicion, by the end of its sixth episode, is managing to move the story forward, telling us new things every hour, without revealing all that much more than we knew about Leo's kidnapping at the end of the first episode.  That's a pretty neat trick, and a recipe for a very compelling mystery, which increasingly is what we have here.

See you back here next week.

See also Suspicion 1.1-2: Excellent Start, But Is It Four or Five? ... Suspicion 1.3: The Fifth ... Suspicion 1.4: Surprises and Invincibility ... Suspicion 1.5: Tara and Sean

 

Suspicion 1.5: Tara and Sean

Superb, delightful episode 1.5 of Suspicion up today on Apple TV+.   Yes, delightful.

[Spoilers follow ... ]

My favorite scene was Tara and Sean in undies at the door, pretending to be a couple when the pesky neighbor came calling with a shotgun or a rifle.   Perfectly staged and acted.  Tara actually enjoying it underneath the pretence.  Sean almost reminiscent of James Bond.

And my favorite line came a little earlier, when Sean remarked of Tara that she looks more like Lara Croft than a professor.  Can't argue with that.  The two have a chemistry that we see again, near the end of the episode, when Tara talks to Sean who is completely unclothed in the bathroom.  Again, well staged and acted.  Good work by Elizabeth Henstridge and Elyes Gabel.

The whole story was well plotted and paced in this episode.  It now looks like Martin Copeland, Katherine's second in command, was responsible for Leo's kidnapping.  Which in turn means that all of presumed kidnappers were set up to take the fall.  And that also means that the killers with American accents who showed up in episode 1.4 are working for Copeland.

But we still don't have the complete story.  There's clearly more to each of the suspects than we knew last week.  Aadesh has sophisticated computer skills, Natalie has more money, etc.  At this point, Suspicion is really shaping up as a first-rate stylish whodunnit, and I'm looking forward to more.

See you back here next week with my review of the next episode.

See also Suspicion 1.1-2: Excellent Start, But Is It Four or Five? ... Suspicion 1.3: The Fifth ... Suspicion 1.4: Surprises and Invincibility 

 

Suspicion 1.4: Surprises and Invincibility

First, let me say that I'm really liking Suspicion on Apple TV+.  It has great ambience, including the music, fine acting (including now Tom Rhys Harries as Eddie Walker), and a plot that keeps slapping you in the face with unexpected developments, often lethal.  Episode 1.4 was the best so far, excelling in all of those pulsing qualities.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Sean nearly kills Tara, who's saved not by the UK police, but a bullet-proof vest.  Sean is not invulnerable, but pretty close to it.  He's stabbed but gets the better of his stabber, and after killing his stabber, Sean dresses his own wound with crazy glue.   Later, the episode ends with Sean rescuing our four other, often hapless, suspects, and killing all of their attackers in the bargain.  These, by the way, have American accents, and sound like Scott on a bad day -- which indeed he had -- but I'm guessing/hoping he wasn't among them.

So who sent the attackers?  Likely Katherine, Leo's mother, but we can't be sure of that.  We do get to see a lot more of Uma Thurman in this episode, but the true intentions of Katherine in this narrative remain a mystery. It's too easy to believe that she's behind the kidnapping, though I suppose that can't be discounted.

Meanwhile, the relationship between Sean and the other four is still not clear.  Why try to kill Tara and then rescue her?   Did he know she was wearing a bullet-proof vest?  And I have to say that Sean does seem a little too invincible to be completely believable.  His escape from the UK police was a little too impressive, unless the UK police are just not that good at catching a killer like Sean, which I'd also find hard to believe.

But these kinds of flaws in the story don't distract from its power in any way, and I'll see you back here next week with my review of the next episode.

See also Suspicion 1.1-2: Excellent Start, But Is It Four or Five? ... Suspicion 1.3: The Fifth

 

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?

 

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

Just saw the first two episodes of Suspicion on Apple TV+.  Looks to be a top-notch crackling whodunnit, with all the trimmings.

Here's the crime: four people in a big New York midtown hotel, wearing British royal family masks (the Queen, Prince Charles, Prince Andrew, and Kate) kidnap the son of the biggest American media operation.  (For some reason, the promotion for the show talks about five suspects not four -- Wikipedia says "Five people - three men and two women - have their lives turned upside down after being identified by London police as suspects in the kidnapping" -- and the above picture shows five.  I have no idea why.  Maybe that's part of the mystery?)  The FBI and their British counterparts soon discover four Brits living not too far from one another in London were in New York the very night of the kidnapping, in the very hotel where the kidnapping occurred.  Three protest their innocence and are convincing, at least to me, under intense questioning.  The fourth, Sean, is apparently not only one of the kidnappers, but definitely a murderer, blowing up his girlfriend on a boat offshore in his smooth and so far successful attempt to elude capture.

So the question is: who among the other three are also guilty?  All three?  That would be an Agatha Christie move, but I'd say unlikely.  But I'd say it's equally unlikely, though not impossible, that none of these three donned a royal mask and helped kidnap the kid in New York.   So the question is which one or two?  And the narrative is doing a fine job at this point in not giving us a clue.

About the acting, all of that is good, too.  Among the actors I know, Uma Thurman plays the kidnap victim's mother, but so far we've barely seen her on the screen.  Noah Emmerich plays the American FBI agent.  First time I've seen him since he did a great job in the same job on The Americans, and he's off to an excellent start here.   The London scenes work well.  All we've really seen of New York after two episodes is the hotel.  But there's clearly a lot more to come, and I'll be on top of this series, adapted from the Israeli False Flag series (which I haven't seen), with weekly reviews after every showing.