PARAMOUNT+ – ON DEMAND – SERIES
After 24 hour clock (2001-2010) et Designated Survivor (2016-2019), the presence of Kiefer Sutherland should awaken the paranoid tendencies of any inhabitant of the planet. However, when the actor appears under the name of John Weir in the first episode of Rabbit Hole, neither his drinking companions (we’re in a hotel bar) nor the beautiful stranger sitting on the next stool (Meta Golding) are suspicious. The conspiracies are there, however, the one organized by John Weir to bring down the price of a multinational and, above all, the one of which he is the victim, a planetary conspiracy whose threads will continue to intertwine throughout the four episodes communicated. before the series premiere.
The “rabbit hole” of the title is the one in which falls Alice, Lewis Carroll describing the passage from one world to another. Yet John Weir is a conspirator, by blood (his father, who disappeared in atrocious circumstances, was a spy) and by profession: he practices a very proactive version of industrial espionage, giving his clients all the means, including those whom the law and morals reprove, to take the advantage over their competitors. This does not prevent him from being the target of more powerful and more devious than him.
Succession of adventures
The first two chapters, entirely devoted to exposing the mess Weir has gotten himself into, offer such a mass of information – economic, biographical, psychiatric – and such a dense succession of adventures that one comes out with a migraine and skeptical of the company’s consistency. Rabbit Hole then changes form (which is logical for a series named in tribute to Lewis Carroll) to turn into a discreetly self-parodic comedy.
First, because the stack of pretenses is suddenly illuminated by the late appearance of Charles Dance, whose presence in the credits and absence on the screen had been noticed. The British actor takes control in the face of a Kiefer Sutherland who hesitates between the stoicism of 24 Hours stopwatch and the fragility of Designated Survivor.
Then because the creators, John Requa and Glenn Ficarra (who began their career with a comedy feature film, I Love You Philip Morris, in 2010), provide increasingly frequent recreational breaks in this succession of revelations, each of which reveals a new illusion. Presented first as an innocent thrown into the lion’s den, Hailey Winton (Meta Golding) takes on an ironic authority that goes a long way towards clearing up the atmosphere of Rabbit Hole. All that remains is to get to the bottom of the hole to find out what is hidden there: yet another variation on the theme of “the truth is elsewhere” or a scholarly satire of the paranoid thriller?
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