As the first episode of The Suspect begins, Dr. Joe O’Loughlin (Aidan Turner) insists that all fear can be overcome whether rational or irrational and that is why he is here. He works with a patient who is worried that a bridge is going to fall and she’ll crash into the water. Although the bridge is made of steel, she still believes it will fall down. They’re interrupted when Joe is told he needs to come now. Joe meets with Amanda Fisher who tells him about a young boy on the ledge and how he might jump. Joe is given a harness that is strapped to the building and one for the kid. He climbs out onto the ledge to confront the boy who is called Malcolm (Gabin Kongolo). Fisher walks Joe through it over the radio. Malcolm left a note to his parents saying he is sorry. Joe also learns Malcolm has a tumor next to his brain stem with a terminal prognosis. Joe tells Malcolm that he doesn’t buy it when people say everything will be fine. He thinks people say that when they can’t think of anything else.

Joe is told to keep Malcolm talking. His parents say he is smart since he just got accepted at Oxford. Malcolm says he doesn’t want any more chemo because he isn’t scared of dying. Joe thinks he is old enough to make these decisions. He believes it is easier to be hopeful and optimistic. Malcolm reveals they’re unable to operate on the tumor. Joe says he gets it and the truth of it is that the tumor is probably going to kill him. Once Dr. Gerald ‘Jack’ Owens (Adam James) arrives, he tells Amanda that Joe shouldn’t be out there. Joe is a patient of his and has just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. After Malcolm asks why he should go back inside, Joe says it is freezing and it is never good when people fall this far from buildings. Joe believes he should say goodbye to his mom and dad before he jumps. Even if he doesn’t have the words, he should let his parents hold him.

When Joe tries to give him the other harness, they end up dropping it. He takes off his harness and wants to put it on Malcolm. Inside, Jack doesn’t like what he is seeing. When Malcolm falls, Joe grabs a hold of him and hangs on to save his life. They are left hanging in the air as the emergency workers try to find a way to save them. They manage to save them by pulling them through one of the windows back into the building before Malcolm’s parents rush in to hug him. Everyone else gives Joe a round of applause. When Joe gets home, Julianne (Camilla Beeput) ridicules him for being stupid. He apologizes and admits he wanted to forget he had Parkinson’s for a minute. Later, Joe looks at a news article about his rescue before his daughter comes in to say she can talk about him at school now. She can’t take a bath because there is no hot water. Joe tries to work on the boiler but can’t figure it out.

He tells Julianne that the patient made it halfway across the bridge and never made it that far before. He admits it was stupid. Julianne warns him that he won’t be able to fight Parkinson’s like that. DI Vincent Ruiz (Shaun Parkes) meets with DS Riya Devi (Anjli Mohindra) at a crime scene of a young girl’s murder. He complains he doesn’t like bodies being dumped in graveyards. She couldn’t have been here more than a few days. Vincent looks at the clumps of dirt and doesn’t think it was done in a hurry. He asks her to collect all spades so they can analyze them for evidence. He thinks the body was brought in by a vehicle even though the gates get locked at night. When DS Devi says this is her fourth murder, Vincent admits it doesn’t get any easier. They agree to get some coffee since the forensics team won’t be there for two hours or so. In the morning, Joe goes to work and says hello to Dr. Rachel Fenwick (Sian Clifford).

He tells her that they asked him to do it and he didn’t think about it before she tells him about her wedding plans. Joe says hi to Bobby Moran (Bobby Schofield) and tells him to go inside. The receptionist doesn’t like Bobby talking to himself because it is creepy. Meena (Carys Bowkett) gives Joe a list of possible replacements since she is leaving. Joe sits next to Bobby and explains he is coming up for sentencing so he is writing a report to tell the judge he needs help instead of punishment. Bobby insists he didn’t do anything. Joe says he assaulted a woman, but Bobby says she jumped the line. He was very upset because everyone knows the rules.

When Joe asks if she reminded him of anyone, Bobby talks about her being in the ground and being asleep. He crumples the paper in his hand. Joe suspects the paper has the number 21 written on it. Bobby is surprised and asks how he knew that. They talk about the number being important to him before. Joe asks if the number 21 brings back good or bad memories. Bobby reveals his dad rode a number 21 bus. Devi tells Vincent that there was nothing on the CCTV cameras. They’ve collected 17 spades so far. Vincent wants the grounds staff fingerprinted and swabbed. He is surprised to learn that the dog walker used a burner phone to call the police after finding the body. The media is already calling her a sex worker, but Devi insists this team didn’t leak that. She offers to talk to women in the area to see if they know any who’ve gone missing. Devi gives him the postmortem report and reveals that the woman was stabbed 21 times.

She points out that the way she was stabbed is odd. Later that night, Joe meets with Cara (Bronagh Waugh) at the pub and she introduces him to Devi. Joe explains he is researching the attitudes of sex workers for a book before he learns that Devi is trying to identify a murder victim. Cara admits the woman’s description doesn’t match anyone they know. Joe says Devi is right that sex workers account for the largest number of unsolved killings. She recognizes him as the doctor who saved the boy before learning about Joe’s research into murders and being able to get away with it. When asked if he has been involved in profiling, Joe says he has never thought about it. He meets with Devi and Vincent the following day. They still haven’t identified the victim and they’re still waiting for some test results. They want Joe’s opinion on the nature of the attack. While he is shown the body, he is told she was in the ground for three to four days, but there is no sign of sexual assault.

The 21 stab wounds to the chest are done in a deliberate pattern. Not one of them is more than an inch deep. The pathologist concluded that the wounds were self-inflicted and they found hesitant marks. Joe suspects she had to work up the nerve to force the blade in. He thinks someone forced her to kill herself. The pathologist thinks the last stab was to the carotid artery, but he didn’t know if it was the victim or the killer. Joe looks through the paperwork after that. Devi wonders if it was a mistake bringing him in since he couldn’t wait to get out of the fridge, but Vincent says that is understandable. She doesn’t think she’ll make a career out of murder. Vincent hopes he didn’t throw up all over the paperwork. He goes back and looks at the victim’s wounds. They scold him since he shouldn’t be in there, but he says he needed to look again to confirm his thinking. He explains that there was old scar tissue on her arms and legs.

Joe says she self-harmed in the past. He isn’t sure if the person who made her do this knew that though. When Devi checks on him, Joe admits he has early onset Parkinson’s. Later, Devi tells Vincent that they got matches from the grounds men and spades, but no alarms in their backgrounds. Vincent shows her a video of Joe using the keypad to get into the refrigeration room so he must’ve remembered the code. As Vincent puts it, he has a criminal mind. They wonder if it was innocent since he lied about the door being open. Vincent doesn’t want him anywhere near the investigation or to share any information with him from now on. The next day, they go back to the discovery site to question why the body was dumped there. Vincent also wonders if the killer actually called it in instead of a dog walker and he got a kick out of seeing them finding her. Devi gets a message about a missing person who matches the description.

The woman is 30-year-old Catherine McCain who worked as an x-ray technician in Liverpool. Vincent wants to trace her path from Liverpool to here. Jack and Joe arm wrestle as a part of Joe’s treatment. Once he wins, Jack admits the diagnosis he gave him last week still stands. He tells Joe that he’ll die with it and still have everything he already has, including the girl everyone wanted at university. Joe thinks it was the girl Jack wanted though. He complains about his shaky hands before asking if he remembers the patient he referred to him a while back. Jack learns about Bobby’s thing he has with the number 21. Joe finds it odd that he has been asked to look into a murder investigation in which a woman was forced to stab herself 21 times. Bobby went to jail for assault after attacking a woman not too long ago. Jack doesn’t think criminal profiling at this point is a good idea.

Meena forces Joe to pick her replacement before he gets to see his next patient. Devi goes to Catherine’s flat where she talks to her flatmate. He explains that he is the x-ray technician while Catherine was a community nurse. Carl admits that she was often depressed. Although she never had anyone over here, she was seeing someone in London. He believes she went to the job interview in London so she could be with him. Devi finds something that interests her. Joe meets with Vincent to see how the investigation is going. Vincent doesn’t tell him that they’ve identified the victim. Joe tells him how they celebrate his mom’s birthday every year by throwing leaves at each other. His mom died in a house fire when he was 14 although he managed to get out. They had a leaf fight for her a few years before she died. He admits he was in the car that drove past them that day.

Joe explains he was at the cemetery with his wife and daughter around the same time they found the body. He thought he should come in and say something about it. Devi calls Vincent to tell him she found something proving Catherine knew Joe. Back at work, Joe learns that Bobby went to pick up the wedding rings, but the engraving was wrong because his fiancée’s name was misspelled. They spelled it Jenny when her name is actually Jenni. He got angry and stormed out before the victim tried to steal his taxi. She had a young girl with her who was screaming and she just ignored him. She pulled him along like an injured animal because his face showed that he was frightened and in pain. Bobby really wanted to stop the noise. He goes on to say some people really deserve to die. When Joe asks who he is talking about, Bobby begins mumbling and pulls out the paper. Joe asks if the number 21 makes him feel better only for Bobby to rip the paper to shreds.

As Bobby leaves, Rachel enters and approaches Joe who admits there is something unsettling about Bobby. Rachel tells Joe that she wants him to walk her down the aisle. Joe picks up a piece of the paper as his hands begin shaking. Vincent meets with Devi and they decide to take the lift because Vincent seems worried. They approach Jack moments later. When Joe gets home, he is surprised to see the detectives there. They show him a picture of Catherine who he admits he knows. She was a patient of his about four or five years ago. Joe denies recognizing her at the mortuary at first, but that is why he went back inside for a second look. He was treating her for self-harming and cared about her very much. He didn’t want it to be real when he saw her there. He thinks he just blocked it out. Devi says they found documents saying he sexually assaulted her, but Joe says she withdrew her allegations. He tells them to talk to Dr. Owens who was a character witness for him.

He told them that the allegations nearly wrecked his career and marriage. Julianne says they didn’t wreck anything because she was lying. Vincent suggests he couldn’t let Julianne ruins his career. Joe is asked about memorizing the code so he could get into the fridge room. He didn’t think it was a big deal, but he admits lying to them. They want his fingerprints and DNA. Joe says there was a spade leaning against his mother’s spade site when they got there so he picked it up and moved it. Julianne claims to remember it. He is told to come in tomorrow so they can take a statement and bring a lawyer. When they’re alone, Julianne asks why she is back in their lives and what else he is hiding. Devi reminds Vincent that he still could’ve assaulted Catherine. She also wonders if he played her by showing up during her meeting with the sex workers. He might’ve wanted to know what she knew. Vincent questions whether he is a hero, a sick killer, or both.

 

The Suspect Review

The first episode of The Suspect showed promise even though the episode was far from perfect. The casting choices could’ve been better because we’re starting to see the same actors and actresses over and over again. We’re also seeing some of the same casting clichés that really don’t reflect reality, but it must be a requirement for modern productions. Aidan Turner was good in the first episode and most of the side characters were well acted as well.

The soundtrack helped increase the intensity of many of the scenes even though it might’ve been a tad too loud at times. The story has the potential to become very good over the next few episodes, but it is already becoming unrealistic. If the series is going to be successful, Aidan Turner will likely have to carry it since he will become the focal point. I wish some of the camera work was a bit better. In particular, the sideway-falling camera shots are more sickening than anything.

The first episode was a good start although a few tweaks could’ve made it even better. The story should develop quickly now that the foundation has been established. The episode scores a 6.5 out of 10. Recaps of The Suspect can be found on Reel Mockery here. Find out how to support our work at this link.