Freeform, formally known as ABC Family, premiered their new summer mystery drama series Guilt Monday night. Leave it to Freeform to come up with, yes, another “Who murdered this girl?” series!
Created by Kathryn Price and Nichole Millard, Guilt stars actress Daisy Head who plays American student Grace Attwood. Grace is in the center of chaos when her best friend Molly Ryan (Rebekah Wainwright) is murdered the night of some wild party. During the investigation, we are introduced to a few of the key characters: Detective Bruno (Cristian Solimeno), Grace’s lawyer Stan Gutteire (Billy Zane), Grace’s district attorney sister Natalie Attwood (Emily Tremaine) and more.
The show starts off with a very familiar pattern: Grace in an interrogation room not knowing what’s going on and then suddenly, the screen flashes to a quick rewind from the past twelve hours before her best friend was murdered. We’re shown Grace and Molly who are clearly way too intoxicated in their apartment until artist Luc Pascal (Zachary Fall) whisks Grace away for the rest of the night. Unsure of what to do next, Molly is seen stumbling around the apartment and cue the dark scenery… She’s murdered in cold blood.
The rest of the show from then on is more of an introduction for the audience to get a feel of who will be important characters in the show, how each character will be connected to the storyline and allows you to make your assumptions on who killed Molly. In my opinion, I was confused. As with any brand new show, every character is new to you and you’re trying to understand how they fit with the cast. This would have been much easier to accomplish if there weren’t so many characters introduced in one episode alone.
Nonetheless, this show has a pretty stellar cast. First off, Billy Zane. Be still my Titanic heart. He definitely makes this show what it is and plays the perfect badass lawyer. Secondly, there was a montage near the end that showed a snippet of Anthony Stewart Head. This time, be still my Buffy The Vampire Slayer heart. Not sure what Head’s role will entail but again, characters were thrown left and right in this episode. We’ll find out soon enough. Lastly, for never seeing Daisy Head in anything before Guilt, she gave a pretty convincing performance that didn’t want to make me cringe every time she took the screen. I’m excited to see her development throughout each episode.
I forgot to mention, the show takes place in London which I personally think is a nod to all the amazing, successful mystery shows that kicked off across the pond. Ahem, Broadchurch. It’s an interesting location choice for the series but I’m sure will make sense in the end. I have a hunch that everything will somehow have to do with the royal family while we’re at it because that’s just what American shows/movies based in London like to do. And, needless to say, there was a scene of a character who goes by “Prince Theo” entering what looked like a pretty expensive piece of property.
The series première had a few tiny setbacks and I wish they slowly incorporated storylines overtime without packing a one-hour series première with at least ten different characters we know nothing about. I’d say take a hint from Pretty Little Liars but even then I can’t keep track of their new characters they introduce each season! Since I’m a sucker for murder mystery episodes, I’m intrigued to find out who killed Molly Ryan.
Rating: 7/10
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