Tatiana Maslany gives Paula the kind of lead turn that makes maximum pleasure guaranteed tv show feel built around pressure, not polish. The Globe and Mail says she is “never being more excellent” as the divorced single mother at the center of Apple TV’s thriller.
The first season runs 10 parts and wraps up July 15, so the review lands with the show still in motion. That timing matters because Paula is carrying the season’s biggest load: childcare, work, custody, and crime, all at once.
Paula in Queens, N.Y.
Paula is a magazine fact-checker in Queens, N.Y., and the review keeps her ordinary routine in the frame while the plot keeps throwing worse problems at her. She calls the cops while making pancakes, then later has to deal with a dead body while looking for a stuffed rabbit in her apartment.
Maslany plays her as sexy, messy, funny, savvy, panicked, frightened, angry, and still trying to look normal. That mix gives the show its edge, because the role is not written as a clean heroic escape from domestic life; it is domestic life under strain.
Karl, Mallory, and Trevor
Paula also has to manage a cordially tense relationship with Karl and his new wife, Mallory, while preparing for a court hearing about custody. At the same time, she schedules her sex life with Trevor, a webcam boy who tells her, “I’m going to make you feel so good, because you deserve it,” before the story reveals that he is a con artist.
That small scam is not a side note. Paula is pulled into a larger scam when Trevor’s scheme collides with it, so the personal and criminal threads stay tangled rather than splitting into separate plots.
Rosen, Geri, and Rudy
David Rosen uses that setup to keep Paula juggling a demanding boss, snarky coworkers, gossipy school parents, a contract killer, a corporate fixer, and two detectives. The review says Rosen and his writers embed their message inside the chase rather than stopping to explain it.
Geri and Rudy, Paula’s co-workers, get a full story arc instead of just orbiting her problems, which helps the season feel like a workplace story as much as a thriller. For viewers, the useful takeaway is simple: this is not a crime show that pauses for family life; it makes family life part of the danger.
The cleanest reason to watch now is that the season’s final stretch is already on the calendar, and the show is still building toward whatever Trevor’s scam and the larger blackmail scheme actually add up to. If you want a thriller that treats single motherhood as the engine rather than the backdrop, this one has already made its case.
