Paranoid–Someone’s After Me
Paranoid, a British police procedural crime series (2016) set in the small town of Woodmere, opens with a brutal murder of a general practitioner pushing her young son on a swing in a public park. The woman is murdered in public by an unknown man in a black hoodie. Who could be the murderer? And what can the witnesses sitting in the park provide as clues to a possible suspect?
Mysterious notes sent by a “Ghost Detective” contribute valuable evidence for identifying and tracking down the murderer. Three detectives–Nina Suresh (Indira Varma of “Game of Thrones”), Bobby Day (Robert Glenister) and Alec Wayfield (Dino Fetscher) are assigned to investigate the case. Their personal backstories, however, complicate their professionalism. As the investigation unfolds, the scope of involvement in the brutal stabbing widens to a conspiracy far outside the confines of the Woodmere community, to an international conspiracy requiring cooperation with a Dusseldorf policewoman, Linda Felber (Christiane Paul).
The murder and the intricate coverup involving a German pharmaceutical company, a British psychiatrist, and relatives or romantic partners of the British detectives add texture to an otherwise formulaic drama of manipulation, deceit, and institutional corruption and malfeasance.
Nina seems to be the core of the storyline and that is the most difficult part of Paranoid. She is concerned with staying focused on a case that her boss considers a regional murder, perhaps by an ex-husband. Concurrently, she is characterized as erratically emotional in a stereotypical way, weak in terms of trying to communicate her feelings and easily gaslit by men. Other female characters are also portrayed occasionally in the same way. Yet although neurotic and insufferably insecure, Nina is also the heroine in contrast to one of the other main leads, Detective Bobby, who is a psychological mess and susceptible to panic attacks and relationship failures.
The “bones” of Paranoid’s storyline is a well-structured hook…at first. But two of the three main detectives, pragmatically speaking, couldn’t find their way out of their own residences. The third detective, the young Alec, is the smart one and the only grown-up in the room during most of this series. And Lucy (the excellent Lesley Sharp in several Masterpiece Theater’s series) is left with lines like “I’m at peace with the world” when Bobby is attracted to her in spite of his extreme neuroses.
Paranoid is a minor-league mystery, although there were opportunities to deepen most of the characters and make them more intriguing and sympathetic. The flattening of the three main characters, particularly Nina and Bobby, diminishes the plot for those who want to know why the criminal mind directed not one but more than one murder.
Not unforgettable and, with some challenges to thread clues together to identify the guilty, Paranoid is still not a waste of time.
Availability: Netflix