We Hunt Together series premiere recap: A stylish, fun new thriller

We Hunt Together series premiere recap: We meet an eclectic new duo.

I had no idea what to expect turning on We Hunt Together, a British import now airing on Showtime. But what I found was a slick, sexy, fun, and stylish new thriller that makes for compelling and creepy summer television.

Amid a somewhat barren entertainment landscape (thanks, pandemic) we haven’t had as many offerings as one might expect. Networks are trying to keep content saved for the next few months when we’re devoid of fall TV season and such, so anticipate seeing more global imports — as The CW has already been doing.

If they’re all like We Hunt Together, then I’m excited to see what’s to come.

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The first episode kicks off in a neon-lit night club bathroom where we meet main characters Baba (Dipo Ola) and Freddy (Hermione Corfield).  Baba works as an attendant when Freddy comes ambling in with her boyfriend Simon (Nigel Harman).

They go into a stall to do coke together. Baba tries to stop them but it doesn’t work. Simon immediately comes across as a smarmy jerk, although Baba and Freddy appear to forge an instant connection.

Fast-forward to three days later and we meet D.S. Lola Franks (Eve Myles) and newcomer to the homicide squad, Jackson (Babou Ceesay)  who formerly worked in the anti-corruption unit. They’re called in when Simon turns up dead, strapped facedown, naked, with a ball gag in his mouth a giant butcher knife wedged into the back of his head in his own bed.

Lola initially thinks it was a robbery gone wrong, but Jackson believes the murderers must have known Simon. Why else would they have left him tied up and gone through the entire process of leaving him strung out and humiliated in the bed? Lola also notices he has facial wounds that appear to have been treated by a professional. She wants to find out if he’s been in the hospital recently.

We Hunt Together series premiere recap: The beginning of the end for Simon.

Back with Freddy at the night club, Simon starts harassing her about some guy she was chatting with at the bar. They start making out and he gets rough with her, to the point she’s begging him to stop. Simon doesn’t back off and continues his attempted assault. Baba suddenly cuts in, beating Simon to the ground repeatedly until Freddy tells him to stop.

Simon is carted off in a cab to the hospital — looks like that’s how he got his facial wounds —  as Freddy says she’s going to stay behind to chat with the cops. She lies and says she doesn’t know who attacked him. Then Freddy backtracks and tells Baba she wants to dance with him, clearly having no intention of calling the police, after all.

Later, we see Freddy at her day job. She works as a phone sex operator at a call center-type place and she appears to regularly get on her boss’s bad side.

She then visits Simon at home and is very blasé about the entire encounter, which pisses Simon off. He doesn’t believe her when she says she contacted the police, nor does he believe she didn’t see anything since he claims he saw a glimpse of a Black guy wearing a gray shirt.

He starts to think it has a connection to when he argued with the other guy, Matt, at the bar and wonders if it has something to do with Freddy’s job. Freddy continues lying, saying she was scared and had her face hidden the whole time. She also doesn’t seem phased when Simon presses his line of questioning.

Next on Freddy’s list of stops is Baba’s house. She says she found his address at the club and invites him to eat candy floss and ride the teacups until they puke at a local carnival. There, they seem to have a good time together until they reach a shooting game. Freddy is suddenly very pushy about asking Baba to take the gun and win her a teddy bear.

Baba is an excellent shot and would appear to have a dark secret of some sort since he briefly envisions a man’s head in place of the target. Does Freddy know something more about Baba than she’s pretending?

They find a nearby bench to stop and chat. We find out the elderly couple Baba is living with is named Janet and Martin, they’re letting him stay with them until his case is finished, he’s trying to ensure he can stay by maintaining his refuge status.

Freddy then asks him why he helped her the night before, and wonders if he would have killed Simon had she not stopped him. Baba gives her a meaningful look instead of answering.

We Hunt Together series premiere recap: Lola and Jackson try to figure out how to work together.

At the police headquarters, Jackson reviews footage of Simon’s autopsy while Lola does some research on her new boss in the bathroom. He’s been dubbed a “hero cop” in the past for talking down a suicidal jumper.

Back in the room, Jackson points out the strange marks on Simon’s soles, it appears someone drew an eye on his feet with a marker.

Jackson and Lola go visit the only neighbor of Simon’s who saw anything. She’s a little old lady who can’t give them many details beyond that Simon had tons of lovers but none stood out to her. Jackson is very friendly with her, to the point that it irritates Lola who already has an issue with him.

They hash things out afterward as Jackson gets to the root of the problem. She doesn’t like that he worked in anti-corruption, essentially thinking he’s a snitch. But Jackson tells her it wasn’t actually a huge part of his job and he understands how frustrating it is to work with a boss who knows less about all this — murder investigating —  than you do.

He just asks her to be patient and to get rid of the formalities so they can be on a level playing field as he’s not really the type to pull rank.

When Freddy arrives home from being with Baba, Simon is waiting for her and shoves her against a wall. She’s genuinely freaked out that he has her home address. They have a confrontation in her apartment where she claims she did not go to the police because she was trying to protect him since he told her he was a pilot. Had she involved the authorities, they would have seen his toxicology report and he could have lost his license.

Simon says he’s not actually a pilot, he just tells girls that to get them into bed, though he notes it didn’t work on Freddy. He also asks her when he’ll get what he paid for, so I’m assuming she may be a sex worker in addition to her day job as a phone operator.

Ultimately, Simon threatens to go to the cops again to find out if she’s lying. he still thinks Matt is the one who beat him up. She convinces him to let her handle it and they set a meeting for his house the next night, I’m assuming to have sex. He then says he’ll be watching her as he leaves.

“My eyes are on you little lady, both of them.”

We Hunt Together series premiere recap: Freddy and Baba get an idea.

Freddy visits Baba again, this time while he’s at church.  She waits until the service is over and he’s alone to chat with him again, asking why he’s so afraid of being sent home. Baba tells her his country has been at war with itself for years and as a young boy he fell in with the wrong crowd. It could take years for his case to be solved, but he doesn’t want to get sent home.

If Simon goes to the police, that could happen. Freddy tells him what happened at her flat, how scared she was when Simon put his hands around her neck. She also says she has to go to his flat that night. Baba proposes they go together and the two embrace.

D.C. Dominique Parkes (Babirye Bukilwa) debriefs Lola and Jackson on what she found on Simon.  They haven’t turned up his cellphone, but Dom turned up a bunch of information on his dating profiles. He had profiles across five different websites, talking to tons of different women. As they start going through the paperwork, Jackson prattles on about how he doesn’t understand all the online dating. He’s happily married and starts to ask Lola what her personal life is like.

She reaches a breaking point and snaps at Jackson, asking him to stop prying into her personal life and questioning why he’s always so happy and cheery all the time, even amid such darkness. Jackson tells her he makes a point to remain philosophical about everything, to keep himself sane.

He then invites Lola to his house for dinner. His wife isn’t there, but she gets to meet his children.  After dining on their pasta bake, he invites Lola into his garage, which is torn to shreds. One day, he couldn’t find his spare key, and his wife Gill said it was back at the house, yet he still couldn’t find it. He grew so incensed, he tore the whole garage apart in search of it. But once he finally found it, one drawer lower than he thought, all of his anger immediately vanished.

Jackson starts explaining to her that the real reason he doesn’t “get angry” at all the horrors they see is because of some craziness about chemicals and geography, how human beings don’t have real control over themselves in moments of pure emotion, etc. — like the way he acted with the key and the garage, I’m not sure I agree with him but if that’s what works for Jackson then so be it!

Lola also seems torn on thinking he’s crazy or genius, but they do ultimately seem to get to a better place of understanding. They both agree to continue their murder investigation.

We Hunt Together series premiere recap: How does Simon actually die?

The night of Simon’s death,  Freddy showed up in a trenchcoat with a bag beside her. Inside the flat, she tells Simon a half-truth about Baba’s involvement and tries to convince him to leave the cops out of it.

Simon is still adamant about it and also doesn’t think he was attacking her that night.  Freddy asks him if he just likes it rough and orders him to go to his bedroom, get naked, and lie facedown on the bed. Then she lets Baba into his flat.

As for Jackson and Lola, they dig through all of the conversations Simon has had with women, trying to make a list of the ones who seem most compelling. Lola wants to start interviews first thing in the morning, even as Jackson notes it’s extremely late. He goes to get food as she remains dedicated to the task at hand.

At Simon’s, Freddy starts strapping Simon down to the bed while asking him if he would have stopped in the alley if she’d ask him to. He says yes, of course, he would. Then she puts a ball gag in his mouth and goes to get Baba.

In the final moments of the episode, we see a stylized montage of Baba and Freddy’s dance the night they met, as the two of them go to kill Simon, creating a deadly duo who genuinely appear to have feelings for one another, especially as they start making out while Simon dies.

Lola pins all the photographs of women to a board and says they’ll start at the top and work their way down, interviewing every single one. The last name on the board? “Zara Thrusta”  from a site called PremiumGirl, a.k.a. Frederica.

New episodes of We Hunt Together airs Sunday nights at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Showtime.