\u201cMemories define us. <\/span>So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? <\/span>Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love \u2013 all forgotten overnight. <\/span>And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s the logline for SJ Watson\u2019s novel for Before I Go To Sleep. It also almost perfectly describes the plot of Surface<\/a>, the latest glossy series to hit Apple TV+<\/a>, except in this instance she doesn\u2019t even lose her memories nightly. They\u2019re just gone at the start of the first episode.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the big central problem for the new thriller series, which stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Sophie, a woman who is left without her long-term memory after an apparent suicide attempt falling from a boat (although whether her head trauma was truly self-inflicted is thrown into question early on). It\u2019s simply the case that it\u2019s been done before.<\/p>\n Of course you can\u2019t judge a series purely on its resemblance to another story, but the problem is that\u2019s all Surface really does \u2013\u00a0resemble other, better stories. It\u2019s a psychological thriller by numbers, and while there are twists and turns along the way to keep you engaged, there\u2019s no hook here, nothing modern or updated or innovative to latch hold of.<\/p>\n Mbatha-Raw is a phenomenal actress and she puts in typically strong work as Sophie. She manages to completely sell us on Sophie\u2019s PTSD, her frantic confusion, her terror at living a life she knows nothing about, elevating every scene she\u2019s in (which is most of them). However, she\u2019s also hamstrung by clunky, expositional dialogue throughout. There\u2019s only so much even an actor of her calibre can do with what is essentially a refrain of \u201cif my life was so perfect, why did I try to end it?\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a difficult balance when a central character doesn\u2019t know their own life \u2013\u00a0a certain amount of exposition is baked into the premise, but unnatural dialogue still sticks out like a sore thumb. Frequent scenes in which Sophie visits to her therapist (a wasted Marianne Jean-Baptiste) are particular offenders.<\/p>\n Of the supporting cast, Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Stephan James get the most to work with, forming the two sides of a love triangle with Sophie, and both are fine, if somewhat bland. Jackson-Cohen brings a welcome air of menace as Sophie\u2019s husband Baden, although this in large part feels like a holdover from his role in The Invisible Man \u2013\u00a0another, better thriller this series rides on the coattails of.<\/p>\n This being an Apple TV+ series, of course it looks phenomenal. It centres on the lives of the uber-rich in San Francisco, meaning every house is a gorgeous, marbled mansion and every outfit is luxurious and lavish. A frequent metaphorical revisit to the waters into which Sophie fell adds a welcome and stirring visual motif, while blurred camera edges effectively highlight her perpetual disorientation.<\/p>\n The upper-class setting feels like it should be important, but the series doesn\u2019t seem to have anything much to say about the lives of the mega-wealthy, other than the shocking revelation that they\u2019re not all happy and many have lied to get what they want. For a series called Surface, it really does live up to its name, and refuses to dig particularly deep into any of its themes.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t examine its central theme of gaslighting in any meaningful way, and instead seems happy to coast, moving from reveal to reveal without engaging with its own central questions. Then, at about the mid-way point of the series it hit me \u2013\u00a0I didn\u2019t care about the mystery. If I never found out what happened to Sophie that day, whether she truly did try to kill herself or whether her husband was involved in some nefarious scheme, it wouldn\u2019t affect me in the slightest.<\/p> That\u2019s a big issue in a thriller such as this, but it\u2019s not to say the series isn\u2019t at all diverting or is completely without merit. In many ways it feels more like a casualty of growing pains in this new era of television and how studios market their shows.<\/p>\n The series has been called an \u201celevated thriller\u201d but in truth it\u2019s an \u201celevated soap opera\u201d \u2013\u00a0Neighbours if it was given a massive budget and had all the fun sapped out of it. It\u2019s perfectly watchable, self-serious shlock dressed up as a high-end drama. None of it matters and you kind of just have to go with that, or risk sinking under its endless melodrama.<\/p>\n It just feels like, given Mbatha-Raw\u2019s talent and Apple\u2019s money, Surface could have been so much more.<\/p>\n The first three episodes of Surface will stream on\u00a0Apple TV+<\/a>\u00a0from Friday 29th July 2022, with further episodes being released weekly. Check out more of our\u00a0Drama<\/a>\u00a0coverage or visit our\u00a0TV Guide<\/a>\u00a0to see what\u2019s on tonight.<\/strong><\/p>\n The latest issue of Radio Times magazine is on sale now \u2013\u00a0subscribe now<\/a>\u00a0and get the next 12 issues for only \u00a31. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the\u00a0Radio Times podcast<\/a> with Jane Garvey.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/body><\/html>\n By James Hibbs Published: Tuesday, 26 July 2022 at 12:00 am 2.0 out of 5 star rating \u201cMemories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love \u2013 all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":19215,"template":"","categories":[5],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/07\/surface-review-a-memory-loss-thriller-that-gives-serious-deja-vu-scaled.jpg",2560,1707,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/07\/surface-review-a-memory-loss-thriller-that-gives-serious-deja-vu-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/07\/surface-review-a-memory-loss-thriller-that-gives-serious-deja-vu-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/07\/surface-review-a-memory-loss-thriller-that-gives-serious-deja-vu-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/07\/surface-review-a-memory-loss-thriller-that-gives-serious-deja-vu-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/07\/surface-review-a-memory-loss-thriller-that-gives-serious-deja-vu-1536x1024.jpg",1536,1024,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/07\/surface-review-a-memory-loss-thriller-that-gives-serious-deja-vu-2048x1365.jpg",2048,1365,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By James Hibbs Published: Tuesday, 26 July 2022 at 12:00 am 2.0 out of 5 star rating \u201cMemories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love \u2013 all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may only…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/19214"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2022\/07\/SurfacePhoto010501-6f4dd9a.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
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