The Innocents Season 1 Review

The Innocents is a short season consisting of eight episodes that are roughly an hour long each. It follows a young couple that has a plan in place to run away with each other. This precedes initial plans from a parent that would split up the duo, so they jump into action relatively quickly. There's however a twist involved here as June (Sorcha Groundsell) has certain special powers. These are discovered and slightly developed over the course of the series. It's somewhat of a surprise I suppose in regards to what the powers can do, so I'll try not to go over it too much.

Joining her is Harry (Percelle Ascott), a regular person that's trying to help June with these new found abilities as they leave their families. There's a lot of emotion here, just tons of it. It heavily leans into the dramatic and romantic elements which in turn drags things down. There's definitely a target audience here, but it didn't connect with me. I felt there should have been more of a focus on the supernatural aspects as those were present and a big issue, yet not explored as well as they could have been. Not to say it should have just been about the powers, the other aspects are important too. It's just that they didn't get a good balance going.

While the couple is the main focus of the series, there is an odd side plot. This follows some other individuals that are being tested on a small island for the same sort of special powers. It adds context to what these abilities can do, but it doesn't really present anything too interesting. It was a very split series in that regard and while the two sides do have some portions that clash at certain moments, it felt like there was an underwhelming conclusion.

The acting was fine, there were few individuals involved so it centers around a core group. There are multiple factions involved, but the way they connect was basically sporadic. That same setup followed most episodes as they seemed to randomly go from place to place. The outside areas did mostly look fine, I wasn't blown away by interior shots too much.

The Conclusion

The Innocents was a tad too dramatic and over the top working towards emotions instead of the interesting concept around powers. They really could have had something unique with the abilities and while they're teased, there's never a full usage or development of their use. It's a relatively slow show taking its time to get going and even when it does get faster in terms of pace there are levels of wandering. There were core points they were trying to hit, but it just feels like the duo is meandering.

That's met equally with a fairly boring side plot that could have been creepy. They had some real neat cult type vibes going on, but they never went all the way with it. I didn't enjoy how emotional and perhaps too romantic it was, I see perhaps where they were going yet the interesting portions were about the type of powers at play. There were times where you could see what they could be used for, yet this seemed like a discovery and then hide format. It went towards doing something interesting and more dangerous, but that was at the conclusion.

The Innocents Season 1 Review at Home with Streamed Viewing
Screening was Provided by Netflix

Rating Overall: 5.5