Behind Her Eyes

What I liked about the first episode was Louise – a character behaving in believable ways as a single mum who just wants some romance in her life. By the series end, believability isn’t high on the agenda. You’ll either love or hate the big reveal.

Unfortunately the pacing here is too slow and many may abandon the train before it gets where it’s going. “Behind Her Eyes” is the perfect example of a six-part series that should have been four. Its stretch marks are unseemly. Less can be more.

Netflix's The Haunting of Bly Manor, itself an adaptation of The Turn of the Screw, never quite descended into ridiculousness. But it was a show that, for me, worked best in a place of spooky insinuation and became less interesting the more it spelled out exactly what was happening.

Some of Behind Your Eyes makes a bit more sense once you get to its ridiculous conclusion, but it largely takes meaning away from what came before rather than adding new depth and excitement.

The poor pacing and uneven tone prevent it from being anything more than a serviceable thriller with a wacky twist that doesn’t quite land.

Watching the bizarre twist eventually unfold on screen, I felt shortchanged. The cost of surprise, it turns out, is feasibility. Reason and narrative continuity, too. If the series is a puzzle, its ending is a piece from a different jigsaw altogether.

Its first episodes are oddly hollow. ... It’s not particularly invested in who Louise or David are, and it’s not all that interested in Rob either. ... Seeing the end does help explain the shallowness and heady ungrounded slickness of the previous five episodes. The empty characterization isn’t egregious, but it seems like an apparatus that’s been built around some hidden central engine the show doesn’t want to reveal.