The first 10 minutes of Nemesis kick things off with a bang. A group of masked robbers go to town on a fundraising gala and rob the gang of rich men playing poker in a backroom. As money changes hands and guns are raised, their accomplice provides the perfect alibi by pretending to have sex with the crew’s leader in an upstairs room. This opening act is everything a crime thriller should be: tense, witty, action-packed. It’s just a pity that the rest of the show fails to maintain this strong start.
The brainchild of Courtney A. Kemp and Tani Marole, Nemesis’ shady cast of characters are at home on the crime-ridden streets of Los Angeles. By night, Coltrane Wilder (Y’lan Noel) is the mastermind behind the fundraising gala robbery, as well as several other high-profile thefts. By day though, he’s a well-respected member of the community earning decent money as a property mogul.
Hunting him down is Detective Isaiah Stiles (Matthew Law, fresh from playing O’Shon in Abbott Elementary). He’s brilliant but very troubled – obnoxious, on the outs with his wife and willing to blow up his colleagues’ cases to pursue his own. As the two circle each other like caged tigers, occasionally meeting up to showboat and gloat, a world of estranged relatives, tense family drama and plans for one last job come into play.
If Nemesis’ plot sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Every cliché possible has been rammed into the first season, and the eight episodes are left creaking under the predictability of it all. Could Stiles possibly be a misunderstood detective with a torrid personal life and flashes of brilliance that make him indispensable to cracking the case? You betcha! Is there a tragic backstory behind all his bravado? Damn straight. Meanwhile Coltrane might be Los Angeles’ most wanted but he’s still a good guy. He valiantly tries to sooth the terrified woman he’s forcing to open a safe, adores his wife and doesn’t kill anybody unless they really, really deserve it.
As the plot limps slowly along, clues are cracked through flashes of intuition, perps fold immediately when put under the slightest bit of pressure, and twists that were signposted a mile down the road come to pass with clockwork regularity. It’s not helped by the acting, which involves an unhealthy amount of staring mysteriously into the distance and making dramatic pauses whenever the moment calls for it. The dialogue is twice as clunky. “You’re allowing your hormones and emotions to override your better judgement,” one woman warns another. When one character tells another that they’re playing with fire, they reply: “I am Prometheus. I bring the fire.”
You have to pity the women in this show too, who are stuck at home while the men play with their guns. Candace (Gabrielle Dennis) is Stiles’ long-suffering, extremely forgiving wife while Coltrane’s supposed partner in crime Ebony (Cleopatra Coleman) just looks confused and upset for much of Nemesis’ eight hour runtime. We know exactly how she feels though.
‘Nemesis’ is available to stream on Netflix from May 14