Paranoid Mini-series Netflix Review

Paranoid (2016)
Mini-series - 8 episodes

Paranoid Mini-series

Watch Paranoid on Netflix
Excludes United Kingdom, Ireland
Created by: Bill Gallagher
Starring: Indira Varma, Robert Glenister, Dino Fetscher
Rated: TV-14/PG-13

Plot
This series follows the ever expanding investigation into the murder of a doctor that occurred in broad daylight in front of her son on a crowded playground.

Verdict
It won't take long before you don't care about the mystery. The trailer made this seem spooky, but the conspiracy is lackluster. A pharmaceutical company wants to conceal information at any cost. It's not groundbreaking, but instead this series focuses on the romantic relationships of the characters. The romance nor the characters are that interesting. The mystery is relegated to a subplot.
I know I'm supposed to care about the characters, but the writing had the opposite effect. After the first episode, this wasn't even mildly interesting until episode seven, and by that point I'm just mad at this show for existing.
Skip it.

Review
This makes me appreciate Case Season 1 a lot more. While Case was soul crushingly bleak, at least I wanted to solve the mystery. I feel like I need to change my review for Case. I now acutely understand bleak is better than boring.

Episode 2 - Nina, Bobby Day, & Alec

Paranoid is disappointing. Where is the paranoia and craziness?  There are no thrills or excitement. There are a lot of little arcs, but this show relies heavily on romantic relationships. Each of the three detectives gets pushed into a romance. The mystery seems to be a subplot. Where are the big reveals, the excitement? It's supposed to be a sweeping conspiracy, but the romance is fluff to make this longer than it should be. This is three or four episodes of mystery stretched into eight.

By episode seven I had figured everything out. It's a pharmaceutical company cover up. There are a few branching story arcs, but I expected them to be insufferable as we close this series out in the final two episodes.

Episode 5 - The mystery shooter. We never find out who he is.

I liked the pilot. Angela, a doctor, is killed in broad daylight on a crowded playground, but no one saw anything. The main suspect turns up dead, but there are a few holes in the story.
The mystery seems to be more of a conspiracy, and the characters had some nice depth, each dealing with their own problems.
What I liked about the characters soon became an annoyance. Indira Varma who plays Ellaria Sand on Game of Thrones is Nina. She's the outgoing female cop who gets dumped and just wants a baby. Those traits aren't bad, but each character's traits take over the show, overshadowing the mystery.
She falls for her young handsome coworker Alec (Dino Fetscher) who likes to quote Shakespeare and has a crazy mother (Polly Walker from Rome). Bobby Day is a nervous guy who falls for a witness to the crime Lucy. Lucy is a Quaker but has a sordid past. It begins to feel contrived and boring.

A ghost detective feeds the cops information, directing them to certain pieces of evidence, telling them, "You have no idea what you're up against." The victim's ex ends up dead too.

Episode 5 - Mystery Detective Stefan

Alec ends up in the hospital after chasing a mystery man that might be involved as he and Nina flirt with a will they or won't they sub plot. This romance was the first crack in the foundation. The show spends way too much time on Alec and Nina.

There is a shady psychologist, Chris, who as you might suspect is involved in the case.
The ghost detective is hunting for papers the victim typed up. What's on them could be the key for the entire case.

Episode 1 - Nina

By episode four, Nina had become insufferable. I get what the writers were trying to do by creating a brash female, but the writing goes so far overboard that you don't like her. Episode five makes her pregnant which is more groan inducing than I can convey in text.
The cops detain the Ghost Detective who just stalls the entire episode. They should have caught him in episode two. I liked him a lot better before we found out who he was.

The conspiracy becomes clearer in episode five. It's a pharmaceutical company conspiracy. The sleazy psychologist that's been floating around since the beginning is definitely involved. There's an Austrian that might be the mystery killer, and another guy after him. This is probably one of the better episodes as it focuses on the actual mystery, but it's not without problems. This should have been episode three.

Episode 7 - Nick Waingrow, conspirator at large.

By episode seven I figured everything out. If I wasn't reviewing this and already so far in, I would have quit, content that I must be smarter than the writers.
The pharmaceutical company conducted a drug trial and one of the participants killed a school bus full of children due to side effects. That had to be covered up so they could keep making money. The pharmaceutical company has a life sized plastic Jesus filled with pills... yeah.

Episode 5 - The grimace I made while watching this show.

Angela, the victim in episode one, was going to expose it and had to be stopped. So the company contacted a local psychologist for a fall guy to avoid loose ends and an investigation. Then the company killed her ex who was head of that particular drug trial.

It turns out the cop in Germany that's been helping them is also involved in the bus crash. She was the investigator and feels responsible with the new information.

The final episode is lackluster. There's nothing exciting as we already know the full story.  While it does wrap a few character arcs, what does it matter? This should have been four episodes long, excising all of the relationship drama and boosting the actual conspiracy.