Surface is back, and we are all anticipating the new adventures of our lovely British amnesiac Sophie (Gugu Mbatha-raw). The series from Veronica West, takes us to London, England, where Sophie has found Eliza, a harbinger of trouble for our dear Sophie. Though she still is suffering from memory loss, Sophie has exposed the essence of who she once was through her escapades back in San Francisco, allowing her to be better equipped for the challenge ahead. Why was Sophie planning to leave her husband to go to London? Who is Eliza to her? And what is waiting for her, across the pond.
Before we get into it let’s recap: Season 1 follows Sophie Ellis–the wife of venture capitalist James Ellis (Oliver Jackson-Cohen)–after she fell off a ferry in an apparent suicide in San Francisco. In the months following her recovery, Sophie works with a therapist and attempts a few solutions to regain her memories after an encounter with an undercover cop, Thomas Baden (Stephan James) prompts her to suspect her husband of foul play.
Fast forward to now and it turns out Thomas was Sophie’s affair partner; she was not an innocent little flower but rather an incredibly capable grifter who worked with James to build an image and reputation for the both of them. She began to act out and eventually scammed James out of $11 million. On that fateful day on the ferry, she was attempting to run away and leave James in the lurch and Thomas behind.
After some messiness, Thomas is killed, and Sophie finally escapes, believing James had something to do with Thomas’ death (he didn’t…kind of). Sophie returns to her prior alias Tess Caldwell and her mission to return to London to find a girl named Eliza Huntley, someone she may have had a tryst with in her past. Now, this leads us to Season 2.
Sophie, now going by Tess, is carrying on with her scheming ways, but this time, she is retracing her steps, trying to figure out what “Sophie” was up to before coming to San Francisco and marrying James. She has expanded her wealth using the money she stole from James and is testing the waters by gaining entry into the world of the elite. She works hard to earn Eliza’s trust so that she can use her to learn more about her past. The season further explores the initial workings of Tess’s relationships but also branches away from the messiness of romantic triangles to focus on a more personal narrative. What she has learned is that her motivations have something to do with her late mother.
The second season is certainly an improvement from the first, simply because we are following a new angle with the amnesia story. Tess still doesn’t have her memories and is in more danger than she ever was. In London, she is surrounded by uncertainty and unpredictable variables. This is primarily exciting because we see Gugu Mbatha-raw explore this character from an entirely different position; she is no longer on the defensive as she was as Sophie in San Francisco. Here, she is on the offensive as Tess in London.
Once again, Gugu Mbatha-raw is generous in this series about shifting identities, the grey area between good and bad and fresh starts. At the end of Season 1, we learn that Tess has not regained her memory per se, but the essence of what she once was has emerged. Tess is cunning, bold, impulsive and assertive in ways the lost and confused Sophie was not until the end. Like Sophie, Tess pushes the boundaries to regain her memories and figure out where she is running to or from.
Despite her gaining her instincts, Tess has no recollection of what she has done, who she has known, and what damage she has left behind since coming to California. However, she moves confidently, never revealing her cards (despite her not having much). Mbatha-raw is immensely fascinating to watch; she surrounds her character with this aura of innocence and naivete, but within her, there is a venomous woman on the prowl, hungry for…what? That’s to be determined. This is precisely why it is so intriguing to watch the show, because Tess/Sophie has layers, and Mbatha-raw is reveling in peeling them back for us. This is a classic psychological thriller, but what is so intriguing with this narrative is that we are following a femme fatale who is for all intents and purposes, our protagonist.
Mbatha-raw effortlessly shapeshifts to adapt to every situation Tess walks into. She never overplays any emotion, carefully curating an image of a strong and assertive woman who deep down is just as lost and confused as the audience. It is a complicated balancing act, being both protagonist and antagonist, the audience surrogate and the show’s greatest mystery.
Tess is as much a hero as she is a villain, as she has weaved an intensely complicated web of dangerous lies and actions. In most cases, it is a bit of a gamble to commit to a second series that follows a lead, which is, for lack of a better term, the series MacGuffin. But with an actress like Gugu Mbatha-raw, the gamble is worth taking.
The new season is just as aggravatingly intense and complex as the first. We have a cast of characters who can all be involved in a larger conspiracy, with Tess in the middle. We say goodbye to the crew from San Francisco and adopt the British aristocrats known as the Huntleys and Irish journalist Callum. Tess has made herself known to them pre-head trauma and is now back with questions to the answers that have been wiped from her memory. Like a hurricane, Tess drops into town and stirs up a lot of drama but with the added complication of her past actions in San Francisco following her to dreary London.
There is an interesting flip here with these characters seeking answers from Tess rather than it being the other way around as it was in the first season. In San Francisco, folks around Sophie know she has a head injury, lost her memories and were basically rewriting their story with her. In London, the slate is clean for Tess, but everyone around her believes she knows more than she does, and they are seeking to write her out of their lives for their own reasons, except Callum, who wants to publish the story Tess can give him.
Millie Brady, Phil Dunster, Rupert Graves, and Joely Richardson are all well cast as the posh Brits who have a dark history they wish to keep hidden, with Freida Pinto stepping in as an outsider seemingly both in the know and on the outs of the reality of being a Huntley. Everyone is well cast for their characters, but the one who unfortunately stands out as being the least served by the script at hand is Pinto. Pinto’s Grace, the fiancée of Dunster’s Quinn Huntley, is an intriguing character who could be a crucial player in the third season (if there is to be a third).
While I appreciated the Mr. Malcolm’s List reunion, Grace felt like collateral damage to the writing trying to be as messy and complicated as it could be. However, how Grace intersects with Tess and her mission felt unnecessary and while it does have consequences, there are easily several other routes for the story to go to get to the same place with Quinn. Personally, it would have been infinitely more interesting to have Eliza and Quinn merge into one character, with Grace being Eliza’s partner instead. That way Grace would engage with Tess more, creating a dynamic that is far more intriguing and rewarding for both Grace and Tess.
The Huntleys act as erratic and recklessly as those with an obscene amount of money normally do when confronted, but there is a murkiness to how they are depicted that doesn’t allow for their characters to really be memorable. In truth, they all serve as obstacles, pawns or adversaries for Tess to overcome in a game of her making. Where the show flatters is the minimal time Tess actually spends with these people. The best moments of the first season are when Sophie is weaponizing her natural charisma and wits to gain something from someone.
The writing is deliberately patient, but it is dastardly slow for viewers like me who want to cut to the chase quickly because the anxiety feels like fire-ants crawling all over my body. Compared to last season, the story moves briskly, and the overall situation is exponentially messier, with more people getting wrapped up in the situation. However, the writing drops the ball on how it executes the story, especially on how it develops the relationships Tess has. The show is very focused on exploratory side of the narrative, and not on how Tess actually navigates through the rough waters of these relationships. We are constantly on edge to get answers, but by episodes two to three, the story becomes quite obvious.
The true stumbling block is how the show bridges both seasons. I love me some Oliver Jackson-Cohen, but James is a character that could have been left behind entirely, or at least give him and his story with Tess space until a third or fourth season. The second season doesn’t bring the payoff that Season 1 was set up to be, so tethering this newish adventure for Tess to the events of last season actually hinders the progress being made. For example, the truth behind Thomas’ death is never properly cleared up. Some would say it was but there is room to argue that Tess believes what she believes still, and frankly, she doesn’t have time to care all that much in the moment we find her in. We never find out who was on the man on the boat when she jumped, or if she intentionally jumped for non-suicidal reasons, or if he mattered at all. To not beat around the bush, James does appear again, but there is not enough work done in the writing to cement what this relationship is meant to be moving forward.
Season 2 was primed for countless interactions in which Tess navigated complicated feelings and relationships to gain knowledge, leverage, or trust from members of the Huntley family. However, we don’t get that, at least not as often as we would have hoped the very recent past becomes a problem. If anything, the situation unravels in a way that Tess is basically a bomb, an analogy made in the first season, and now everyone around her is scrambling to make sense of what is happening. This leaves us with many scenes where Tess is not at the forefront, and we are left with characters that, frankly, we don’t care about and whose lives we aren’t invested in.
As Season 2 comes to an end with yet another open-ended conclusion that is far less of a conclusion than one would hope for, the feeling that creator and showrunner Veronica West is making a massive mistake cannot be shaken. The ending of the second season is satisfactory on its own, especially if Season 3 is guaranteed, but as a whole, this season fails to be as satisfying as the first one, which is saying a lot since the first season did left A LOT to be desired. Nevertheless, Surface is a great show that keeps audiences engaged, not because of the central mystery, but because a brilliant actress is anchoring the show with an immensely entertaining character.
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