Suspect takes itself incredibly seriously. When Channel 4’s thriller series, starring crime drama stalwart James Nesbitt as a police detective who found himself investigating the death of his estranged daughter Christina, was first broadcast in 2022, it was criticised for being, to quote this paper’s review, “both very serious and quite silly at the same time”. Given that its big twist was that Nesbitt’s character Danny was arrested for killing his own daughter’s murderer, it was a fair assessment.
This time, it’s his ex-wife, Dr Susannah Newman (Anne-Marie Duff, more than worthy series lead and more engaging than Nesbitt ever was), who has taken centre stage. You’d have thought the team behind Suspect would have picked a side on the trivial-earnest scale by now. But on the basis of the first two episodes of series two, it has exactly the same tone of self-importance. You have to admire the ability to be both a parody of a crime drama and utterly humourless at the same time.
Last night’s opening double bill began with Susannah in the throes of grief, walking amongst the dark wood and glass panels of her expensive Scandi-inspired home like a ghost. Less than a month had passed since Danny’s arrest and she wasn’t ready to return to reality just yet.
But then came a knock on the door from an unassuming man called Jonathan Fallow (Dominic Cooper), who was looking to use her services as a hypnotherapist. He was polite and keen, yet a dodgy glint lurked in his eye. That same look is seen in all the characters of Suspect. Here, nobody can be trusted. Had a dramatic “dun dun duuuuun” sound effect accompanied every line of dialogue, it would have been no less subtle.
For reasons not entirely clear, Susannah welcomed him into her home, not even kicking him out when she found him straying into her kitchen to look at pictures of her dead daughter. Once settled into her office, Jon succumbed to Susannah’s spell, and let himself relax into her expensive-looking, ergonomically designed chair. Speaking in his fugue state, he described a nervous girl in a “safe space in the middle of the sea”, before babbling about killing women for money, and using chloroform because “it’s cleaner”.
“You have to stop me,” he yelled, suddenly, clutching his hands around Susannah’s neck before writhing on the floor. Cooper, you could tell, was really trying to prove his acting chops, yet the consistent intensity in every line made the performance a little hammy. Susannah made a dash and dialled the police, and got through to Richard Groves (Ben Miller), the superintendent with whom she was having an affair. But Jon had fled before the fuzz rocked up.
Watching the opening episode in isolation, you’d be forgiven for assuming Jon was going to be the primary villain. But the series structure means things are never that simple – all characters are treated with the same scepticism, forcing the actors to give cookie-cutter, generically shifty performances.
When Tamsin Greig appeared as Richard’s wife Natasha, with a vape and cocktail-in-a-can in hand, she initially felt like a much-needed shot of colour among the sleek grey, yet before long she was just as monotonous as the rest of the cast. As with series one, which also starred Richard E Grant and Niamh Algar, one of Suspect’s biggest sins is the wasting of dramatic talent.
It’s impossible to know what crime we were supposed to be focusing on. Was it still Christina’s murder, the presumed plot to cover it up, or the murder of other, unnamed women?
The answer, I would predict, is a combination of all three, but this muddled double bill gave little away. The next six episodes could be exciting and more focused, but from here, it’s hard to understand why you’d stick around long enough to find out.
‘Suspect’ continues tomorrow at 9pm on Channel 4.