Not all memory lapses are equal. Being absent-minded is normal. But what if a person forgets to remember? What if a person meets with an emotional trauma that reboots the mind, wiping out short-term memory? Let’s take it further. What if a person is forced into a situation of emotional trauma that wipes the slate clean of recent memories? These are some of the questions that interested American television producer and writer Veronica West whose work profile includes shows like Chicago Fire and High Fidelity. She has another ace up her sleeves in the form of Surface, a psychological thriller that has just hit Apple TV+ streaming service.
Surface opens with Sophie (played by the very talented Gugu Mbatha-Raw, the star of The Morning Show and Loki) trying to get on with her life after she is rescued from a suicide attempt. Her life is seemingly perfect as her husband James (played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen of The Haunting of Hill House and The Invisible Man fame) takes care of all her needs, encouraging her to get on with life. Sophie tries but holding her back is the inability to cross the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. It’s traumatic, however much she tries.
Needless to say, the foundation is complex and Veronica does a great job in setting up the psychological thriller. “We came upon this idea of what if you woke up and didn’t know your own secrets? I feel like there are two sides to everyone. There’s this image that we want to project to the worlds that we want to curate and make it look kind of perfect, even to the people closest to us. We never tell anybody our deepest, darkest secrets, or the kind of messy emotions that we keep inside,” says the showrunner over a video call.
Stephan James plays Baden, an undercover cop, who informs Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Sophie that her past was far from perfect
Sophie wakes up with this predicament where she has lost her inner self, and she only knows her world from what the people around her are telling her. “But everybody has an agenda… even her husband, even her best friend, they kind of want to erase their mistakes from the past, or perhaps protect Sophie from certain things. Maybe it’s for the wrong reasons. Maybe it’s for the right ones. They leave her standing on shaky ground,” says Vernonica.
An apt summary of the show will be dealing with mistrusted love. At its heart, Surface is about love and trust but minus unwanted mush. Sure, the couple live in the posh part of San Francisco but that doesn’t stop danger from lurking in dark corners. After all, dark corners are reserved for dark deeds. As Sophie manages to get out of the house, she meets a man named Baden (played by Stephan James), who informs the fragile girl that it was much more than a suicide attempt. The mind begins to race in different directions.
‘Secrets that we keep’
“Whose side are you on, James or Baden? At the core is love,” says Gugu about her character Sophie. Oliver quickly adds, “It’s quite a central (theme). What I think makes it so compelling is that you know that there’s something incredibly honest about this relationship. And her marriage (appears) very true for a lot of people. It’s all about the secrets that we keep and about what we hold from each other, and why we hold those things from each other. The theme of trust is a huge thing, specially for Sophie.”
To get the theme of memory loss appear real, Veronica had an opportunity to meet a professor specialising in the topic. “A lot of people think of amnesia as a story device, and something that only happens in the movies. But it’s actually something that can happen for a variety of reasons in real life. And one of the more interesting ideas that we heard was that, of course, this can happen from physical trauma, a traumatic brain injury, which is what we assume has happened to Sophie. But it can also happen from emotional trauma, your own brain can try to protect yourself from memories that are too painful to relive. And that becomes a question in the middle of the series — what was the real cause for Sophie’s memory loss and how will she ever get these memories back,” says Veronica.
Gugu didn’t base her character on anyone specific she had seen on screen. “I watched Vertigo, which I know was an influence on the showrunner but not really for Sophie as a character. I think it was more of a creative process. It was unusual having a character that has no memory at all; the development of the character kind of happened for me on screen alongside the audience as well.” For Oliver, it was all about how Veronica conceptualised the show. “It was very easy to access the characters,” he says.
Surface showrunner Veronica West
‘Premium television’
Surface is a miniseries that’s tightly written. Turning it into a movie would have been a tough call for Veronica. “I am such a fan of premium television, and these short seasons of eight or 10 episodes work well. Surface is like eight hours long, and we always kind of thought of it as an eight-hour movie. Allowing the characters to develop and see other people’s points of view, getting deeper into the emotions behind people’s motivations — I think that’s what premium television allows us to do, and Apple is releasing the first three episodes at the launch. By the end of the first three hours, Sophie is standing on the edge of a cliff metaphorically. She has discovered that her life is completely different than what she thought it was. What is she going to do about it?”
Such convolutions in the plot keep viewers guessing and with each episode a new character appears to be the culprit. Friend or foe? Everyone keeps taking sides. “At times I would have had to go to Veronica and be like, ‘Wait, what do I know now?’ It was important to be in the right headspace,” says Gugu.
It wouldn’t be giving away too much when we say some of the people living in upmarket neighbourhoods often end up being in the tightest of spots. Everything looks hunky-dory on the surface but delve slightly deeper and you are certain to find a love story gone wrong.
Surface is currently streaming on Apple TV+
Coming soon on Apple TV+....
Bad Sisters
The darkly comedic murder mystery series is the latest from Emmy Award nominee and BAFTA Award-winning creator and star Sharon Horgan. The tight-knit Garvey sisters have always looked out for each other. When their brother-in-law winds up dead, his life insurers launch an investigation to prove malicious intent — and set their sights on the sisters, all of whom had ample reason to kill him.
The Greatest Beer Run Ever
Starring Zac Efron and Russell Crowe, the Apple Original film is directed by Peter Farrelly and hails from Skydance Media. It is the true story of Donohue, who left New York in 1967 for Vietnam to track down and share a few beers with his childhood friends while they were serving in combat.
