Surface debuts globally on July 29 exclusively on Apple TV+.
A satisfying potboiler mystery is always a fun summer diversion and Apple TV+’s Surface ticks all the boxes for what makes the genre worthy: gorgeous, wealthy characters; a gray moral compass; love triangles; and a lead character with amnesia and no long-term memory. It’s a smorgasbord of tropes but series creator/executive producer Veronica West manages to arrange the pieces in suitably entertaining ways, shifting and playing on our assumptions with enough finesse that the outcome feels unexpected and worth the ride.
Set in the most affluent neighborhoods of San Francisco, Surface opens with Sophie (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) waking from a nightmare of her recent horrific near-drowning. Having fallen from a ferry five months earlier, she’s trying to navigate her “new normal” with no memory of her past, or her present as the wife of James (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a wealthy VC portfolio manager. She’s spent months convalescing in their gorgeous Victorian home, being doted on by a concerned (and helicoptering) James, and figuring out how to cope with the help of her therapist, Hannah (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), with the aftermath of being told she jumped off the ferry. Everything from the fancy dresses in her closet to the pictures on their walls are mysteries that she trusts James and her best friend Caroline (Ari Graynor) to reveal to her. But Sophie clearly doesn’t believe in the narrative she’s being fed.
As she begins to venture out into the outside world, volunteering at the local hospital and socializing at James’ work soirees, Sophie's curiosity prompts her to look at her own medical records which have some startling notes. And then she’s approached by a stranger, Thomas Baden (Stephan James), who slips her matches to a bar in Chinatown. Intrigued by the possibility of some answers, Sophie ventures to the dive bar and Baden reveals this was her old haunt and that he was the officer assigned to her case after her incident. He spurs her to dig deeper into inconsistencies regarding James’ behavior, and her former selves’ actions.
Like peeling back the layers of an enigmatic onion, Sophie pieces together that her pre-accident self was making some very morally complicated life choices with Baden. And as she continues to pull more aggressively at the threads of her past life — despite her therapist’s warnings — a lot of mess comes bubbling up in her fractured memories. James becomes more fraught with her erratic behavior and they challenge one another about the secrets they’re both keeping. He looks more shifty in his obsession with knowing her whereabouts, while Sophie digs into their marriage with observations by Caroline and James’ best friend, Harrison (François Arnaud).
The “Pilot” episode lays the groundwork for Sophie’s predicament very well, with all of the players in her small circle both helping and hindering her from feeling like she’s getting the true story about her life before. But West and her writers don’t quite get a hold of the pacing of their mystery until Episode 5, “It Comes in Waves.” In it, director Sam Miller plays with Sophie’s increasing impulses to push the boundaries of who she is now, by trying experimental memory recovery, drinking, popping pills, and unrepentantly flip-flopping between James and Baden’s affections. Tripping out at Caroline’s art show flips a switch in opening up Sophie as a character in regards to how she will continue to pursue her history and the “truths” that will continue to make her, and us, swing wildly back and forth, reassessing each new piece of information that comes to light. It’s after this point that the series pushes forward with renewed momentum and cliffhangers that are more propulsive going straight through to the finale.
As a series, Surface is gorgeously shot, portraying an almost fairytale version of San Francisco that’s always glowing with wet streets of reflected neon and neighborhoods only possessing expensive cars and luxuriously appointed abodes. It’s visual wealth porn similarly captured in Big Little Lies or Little Fires Everywhere. It’s not surprising that all three are executive produced by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine production shingle, so there’s a throughline here of watching the dappled lives of the uber rich deal with their niche problems. However, where Surface acquits itself differently is showing Sophie's distaste and unease with her affluent life. As she struggles with being in her own skin, she’s also not in accord with the life James has built for her and that puts another strain on their relationship, which is interesting and feels authentic in her journey of discovery. That’s expanded upon in the sixth episode, which is one of the better efforts of the season.
The cast is also integral to selling this whole story, with Mbatha-Raw giving a sympathetic yet ambiguous performance as Sophie. She starts as a blank slate innocent, but as more and more of who she was comes into focus, Mbatha-Raw flirts with all the iterations of who Sophie has been and could be. At times, we’re watching her decide which Sophie she wants to be and it’s engaging to watch. Jackson-Cohen vacillates between loving and obsessive well, as his performance leaves us on our toes about whether he’s the cause of her problems or the sad recipient of Sophie’s choices. Graynor is also great at leaving us wondering if she’s a friend or foe. Unfortunately, Stephan James’ Baden isn’t given enough backstory to flesh out beyond the face value, which is really unfortunate because his character feels the most underserved in the story. He’s given scenes where you’re left wanting to know more about his work life or his personal life, but he’s only oriented around Sophie, which means we don’t get much of his internal life outside of his devotion to her.
Maybe the most disappointing element of the series is how it ends. There’s a strong argument that where it's left is just fine, like a great book that leaves you thinking about it for days or weeks. West and her creative team leave us with some answers, some questions but no need to keep going. Yet the very final minutes all but require that, which feels like it's been mandated to stretch the premise, regardless of its plausibility. And that’s always the cardinal sin of a great mystery: not knowing when to end the game.
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