Viewpoint: Episode One - Review

With strong roots clearly in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, BAFTA winner Noel Clarke stars in ITV's new thriller. When primary school teacher Gemma King goes missing, a detective sets up an observation post in the home of a single mother in order to surveil the prime suspect, the teacher's boyfriend.

I went into this episode pretty open-minded, not having any real expectations and concluded with the feeling it was an okay watch. The plot felt quite contrived and familiar to this genre, I didn't find myself as invested in the mystery or characters than I was expecting. However, I will say that Viewpoint did a great job at creating such an intimate show with the harsh COVID-19 filming regulations - so bravo there!

The casting for this show felt a bit mixed - truthfully, one of the absolute standouts was Amy Wren and her character goes missing after the first five minutes. Noel Clarke plays a character that we've seen before - the brooding loner detective with a haunted past - and for the first episode, I couldn't see any new layers that Clarke could bring to this archetype despite giving a decent performance. Other actors I also enjoyed was Bronagh Waugh and Shannon Murray - it's always great to see a disabled actress playing a well-written disabled character, we need more of that representation.

From a writing perspective, the characters felt like a bit of a blank canvas and even from the voyeuristic point of view, we haven't learned anything new about the characters. Despite this show being based on an idea by Fleabag and Emmy award-winning director, Harry Bradbeer (Killing Eve, No Offence) and co-created and written by Edgar award-winner Ed Whitmore (Safe House, Manhunt), I found the opening episode a bit underwhelming.

Truthfully, if we are to spend five episodes watching these characters through their windows - we need intimate, flawed or dark sides to our suspects. Seeing literally into these characters' homes, we as the viewers should see the messy side of the characters that they'd never show to the outside world. I found myself waiting for something, anything to show a contrasting side to Fehinti Balogun and Catherine Tyldesley's characters and this episode gave us nothing. They were the same inside their private spaces as they were in public, which was immensely disappointing.

The pacing of this episode felt slow, mainly because it was establishing our key suspects in Gemma's disappearance - but we only saw Gemma interact with three of those characters before she goes missing - so it's difficult to analyse Gemma's relationships within the community. I think Alexandra Roach and Noel Clarke's Zoe and Martin are headed into a romantic subplot, but I'm not feeling the chemistry there yet. So far, these characters seem to have a friendly repour - undecided whether its the acting or the writing, but I'm not seeing that spark between these characters that could progress into romance. However, I could be proven wrong in future episodes.

The history between Murray and Clarke's characters as former DC partners was by far the most interested part and that scene deserved way more than a fleeting flashback. I really hope we see more of what happened to Hayley and how Martin blames himself for what happens. There's a lot to unpack there.

With most of the road as potential suspects, we see a lot through the viewpoint of the other characters. There weren't really much for the audience to piece together and this episode left us with more questions than at least a couple answers. With a final scene that was way to similar to its Alfred Hitchcock's counterpart, we finally get a glimpse of what could be going on at the house across the road...

For me, this wasn't a terrible watch or a mind-blowing experience. It was nice and a generally mean that, a thriller just to sit back and consume. Some may rightly point out its not much of a thriller and the mystery elements have not captured me yet, I'm curious to see the next four episodes and see what happened to Gemma.

TWO AND A HALF STARS OUT OF FIVE