Surface isn't deep enough for a talent like Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Gugu Mbatha-Raw is an undoubtedly skilled actor and bonafide star. From Doctor Who and Black Mirror’s “San Junipero” to The Morning Show, Loki, and The Girl Before, she commands the screen by immersing herself in character. So it’s understandable why she was chosen to lead the Apple TV+ psychological thriller Surface. (It’s also her first co-producer gig alongside TMS co-star Reese Witherspoon.) The neo-noir drama completely relies on Mbatha-Raw, who is in almost every frame, to sell intense emotions like angst, fear, and uncertainty. It’s a riveting performance, just not a riveting show, the rare middling new drama from a streamer we’ve come to rely on.

Created by Veronica West, the series insists (read: tries way, way too hard) on being sexy and edgy. But it sadly doesn’t go beyond some, ahem, surface-level thrills. It’s often predictable, and in the few instances when it isn’t, the plot twists still land with anticlimactic thuds. At eight hours, the series feels drawn-out, and in need of sharper editing and direction. It’s too bad, as the story hints at potential (if not necessarily unique) intrigue.

Mbatha-Raw plays Sophie Ellis, a complicated woman who loses all of her memories after jumping off a San Francisco ferry in an attempt to take her own life. Six months later, she’s living with her doting husband, James (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a wealthy venture capitalist seemingly dedicated to ensuring Sophie’s safety. As she tries to connect the missing pieces, she can’t fathom why she would try to commit suicide in the first place. After all, Sophie figures, she leads a pretty idyllic and successful life. And it doesn’t help that neither James nor her own best friend, Caroline (Ari Graynor), will discuss their histories together—or why her husband’s coworker, Harrison (François Arnaud), deeply distrusts her.

To make matters worse, Sophie meets an undercover cop, Thomas Baden (Stephan James), who she happened to have been having an affair with before her ferry incident. Thomas convinces Sophie that her husband could’ve pushed her off the boat because their marriage was on the rocks. His arrival sparks a subtle cat-and-mouse chase as Sophie tries to figure out which of the two men is lying to her and why, sorting out her own feelings for both of them, all while being haunted by flashes of her own dark past.