Stream It Or Skip It?

The new thriller Girl Taken on Paramount+ is refreshingly straightforward storywise. It seems like if there are any twists, they’ll be kept to a minimum and context won’t be purposely kept from viewers. At least that’s how it seems after the first episode.

GIRL TAKEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: A young woman puts on a record. She serves strawberries to a man sitting at a kitchen table, but he tsks at her when she goes to eat one; she spits on them out of spite. When she brings them to him, he yanks on the chain around her ankle to get her to sit with him.

The Gist:  Some years earlier, twin sisters Abby and Lily Riser (Delphi Evans, Tallulah Evans) are getting ready for their last day of school. Their mother, Eve (Jill Halfpenny), is of course, over the moon about the two of them graduating high school. The girls, who were so close when they were younger, have diverged a bit as teens; Abby is the more bookish of the two, while Lily likes to hang out with her boyfriend Wes (Levi Brown) and get into things Abby never would.

Abby’s favorite class is English, taught by Rick Hansen (Alfie Allen), whom she’s so taken with she accidentally calls him “Mr. Handsome.” He has written her a ringing letter of recommendation that helped her get into university, and he insists she call him “Rick” now that she’s graduation. He also gives her a book of poetry.

After school, Abby wants to hang out with Wes and their friends at an abandoned warehouse, knowing that Eve is going to be back late from her nursing home job and won’t do their celebratory dinner. Bored, Abby puts on some of Lily’s clothes, and takes a shortcut through the woods to the warehouse. We see a car following her.

At the warehouse, the sisters get into a huge fight, with Lily literally slapping Abby. They both storm out, but the car that was following Abby stops to pick up Lily. The driver is Rick, and he eventually knocks her out with cloroform and takes her to a broken-down cottage.

As news of Lily’s disappearance hits the news, with Eve being encouraged by DS Tommy Shah (Rikash Bhai) and PC Rachel Brinton (Victoria Ekanoye) to appeal to the news media, Rick goes to help everyone search for Lily, with his goal of keeping his ties to Abby close. His plans for Lily, though, are even more sinister.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Girl Taken, written by David Turpin, Suzanne Cowie and Nessah Muthy and based on the book Baby Doll by Hollie Overton, has shades of the flashback portions of the NBC series Found. This series has nothing to do with the 2025 Lifetime movie Girl Taken, by the way.

Our Take: Girl Taken may end up having some surprises as it tells its story, but for the most part, it’s straightforward: Creepy teacher takes teen and tries to remake her in his weird, old-fashioned image. She finally escapes a few years later and finds that things with her sister and others in the small town where she grew up has changed. Everyone hunts down the resourceful teacher who fooled everyone for years.

It’s almost refreshing how simple the basic plot is. But where the show begins to show subtlety and nuance is in the performances. Alfie Allen is creepy as hell as Rick, and even when he’s trying to be “normal,” like when he interacts with his wife Zoe (Niamh Walsh) or goes to help look for Lily, he’s a bit off. He has some odd fixation with life about 100 years ago, as he listens to old 1920s songs in his car and insists that Lily dress in clothes that would have looked at home on The Waltons. That aspect of Rick is offputting but fascinating, thanks to Albie’s performance.

But there is also the bond between Lily and Abby, who are played by real-life sisters (albeit not twins). You can see that push-and-pull chemistry between them, where they are at times as close as two sisters can be and at other times, they’re at each other’s throats.

So those performances should carry us through a story where the tension of Lily’s captivity, then the added tension of the manhunt for Rick, should carry the action. What we hope is that the storytelling remains straightforward and only gives viewers occasional twists and turns.

Performance Worth Watching: As we said, Alfie Allen does a good job of playing a creepy guys who seems to be good at hiding his weirdness from the general public.

Sex And Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: After she puts on the dress Rick got her, Lily stars crying. He comes closer and says, “There she is. You’re crying… baby doll.”

Sleeper Star: Jill Halfpenny is excellent as Eve, who raised the twins on her own and is understandably distraught when Lily disappears.

Most Pilot-y Line: Everyone in the show so far seems to have exceedingly nice and large houses, especially given the jobs they work.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Girl Taken builds its tension in a straightforward manner, not through trickery or withheld information, and that is a rare commodity on streaming TV these days.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.