Not to put too fine of a point on it, but the first season of “Surface,” the AppleTV+ show that both you and I forgot existed, was not great. A mystery/thriller in name only, it amalgamated the worst of parts of ‘prestige’ TV — faux pretentiousness, sleepy episodes, an unwillingness to actually answer any questions quickly — into a ponderous eight-hour dive into the mysteries of Sophie Ellis’ (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) life before she lost all of her long-term memory after falling off a ship (read our season one review, which is admittedly much more charitable than this assessment).
It’s a cliché to suggest, but “Surface” really could’ve been a lean film. Instead, it ended up as an afterthought on a streamer already bursting with interesting, although under-seen, shows.
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Amnesia has often been a tried-and-true method of dramatic tension. Here, however, it felt like an excuse to withhold plot points for entire episodes. When creator Veronica West finally did unspool some answers in the final few episodes, they not only came across as obvious (though they were), but they also didn’t reward the viewer’s patience. Of course, spoilers ahead.
In the end, we learn Sophie’s life had been a lie, and she had essentially been playing both her husband James (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and lover Thomas (Stephen James) off of each other while hoping to run away with money that she stole from James’s venture capital firm. The season ended with Thomas dead and Sophie faking her death, only to adopt a name she found in a passport — Tess Caldwell — and head to London to find Eliza (Millie Brady), a woman who had haunted her fractured memories across all of season one.
Not that any of the above recap really matters, however. Because, in a second season that I’m frankly shocked exists, “Surface” attempts a hard reset. Outside of knowing that Sophie/Tess stole money from James, one frankly could go into this season having memory-holed the first season and understand what’s going on. Taking place entirely in London, and with a new cast save for Mbatha-Raw and Jackson-Cohen, West and her co-writers jettison the languid pacing of the first season for a tense, ridiculous, and soapy thriller. It’s a stark improvement, but one has to wonder if it really matters. Did anyone stick around to even get to this point?
While Sophie’s memories still aren’t fully formed, her run-in with Eliza at the end of season one suggests a tension between the two. This season picks up with Sophie attempting to ingratiate herself with the Huntleys, a wealthy aristocratic family that not only includes Eliza but also her brother Quinn (Phil Dunster) and his fiancee Grace (Freida Pinto). How the Huntleys are related to Sophie and what happened between her and Eliza is the main mystery that unfolds over the course of eight breezy episodes. Complicating Sophie’s attempts is a journalist named Callum (Gavin Drea), who is investigating Quinn’s previous bad-boy behavior and was in contact with Sophie before she ran away to San Francisco.
Much of the season, then, keeps the narrative outline centered on the mystery of Sophie’s earlier life. Yet, contrasted with the insular focus on James and Thomas that held season one back, West’s decision to expand the scope of the characters here creates a more propulsive viewing experience. Instead of the repeated shots of Sophie running through San Francisco that felt like filler, for example, we dive into the backstories of not only Eliza but also Quinn, their father and grandfather, as well as Grace. While this decentralizes Mbatha-Raw’s character, to a certain extent, it helps with the pacing of the show.
Further, Dunster is a standout. Channeling Jamie Tart before he reformed, Quinn is a scheming, inept man-child with the world at his feet and no idea how to manage it. His attempts to distance himself from the more nefarious gossip about his family — including, of course, rumors of murder – nevertheless bring him closer to his father and grandfather. The same goes for Brady, who gives Eliza a more sympathetic bent than Quinn, as she struggles to figure out why Sophie has returned and what she wants.
If anyone is wasted, it’s Pinto. Grace often feels like an afterthought throughout the season, and attempts to complicate her relationship to Quinn towards the end feel more like setting up season three than actually fleshing out her character. Like everything she’s in, Mbatha-Raw was frankly one of the only reasons why the first season was watchable. Here, she’s a much more dynamic presence, portraying a forced confidence around the Huntleys, even when she has no idea what history she has with them. The same goes for Jackson-Cohen, who gets rid of the dopey-sad energy that he brought to James in the first season for a more frantic performance that fits alongside this season’s more campy tone.
What will happen to “Surface”? Who knows. It’s probably not a spoiler to say that this season ends much like the first one, having answered some questions while also setting up a third season that I would also be shocked to see greenlit. With so much content available these days, will someone stick through a tepid initial season to get to the good stuff? Maybe. But, after watching all of the first season in preparation for this review, I was somewhat dreading revisiting these characters. The fact that I found myself actually having fun here is perhaps more shocking than the mysteries surrounding Sophie’s history. [B-]
