--- title: "Believe" year: 2014 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/believe" fi1m_score: 49 critics_score: 47 critics_reviews: 6 published: "2026-09-20T09:17:18.955403+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T09:17:33.386974+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Believe (2014) Created by Mark Friedman, Alfonso Cuarón · 43m · MPA TV-14 · Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Drama **Fi1m score: 49** · Critics 47 from 6 reviews *In a sentence:* Alfonso Cuarón shoots the car crash; the next twelve weeks are somebody else’s problem > Alfonso Cuarón directs a pilot that opens like a film and settles within the hour into a chase anybody could run. Sequoyah and Lindo are worth watching; the thirteen episodes around them are not, and a series about wonder should not be this easy to predict. ## Synopsis Bo Adams (Johnny Sequoyah) is a small girl who can move objects without touching them, see what people are about to do and, now and then, make them kinder. A car crash at night kills the couple looking after her, and the men who caused it are collecting her for Roman Skouras (Kyle MacLachlan), who has spent years studying children like her. Dr. Milton Winter (Delroy Lindo) has other plans. He breaks a convict, Tate (Jake McLaughlin), out of prison hours before his execution and hands him the girl with one instruction: keep her moving. Tate does not want a child and Bo does not much want him. Winter’s associate Channing (Jamie Chung) steers them by phone, and Skouras’s scientist Dr. Zoe Boyle (Kerry Condon) is never more than a town behind. ## Review *Believe* was created by Mark Friedman and Alfonso Cuarón, and Cuarón directs the first episode. Its opening minutes are the best argument the whole 13-episode run ever makes for itself. A car leaves a road at night, and the camera stays with it as it rolls, then stays with the girl as she climbs out of the wreck, then stays with the men who come for her, all in one long take that has been planned down to the water on the windscreen. It is a piece of staging that would be impressive in a cinema. On television, in a series that first aired on 10 March 2014, it is a promise the rest of the show cannot keep. The premise is a decent one and the show knows it. Bo (Johnny Sequoyah) can do things nobody can explain, and rather than build a weapon the writing builds a moral: she is drawn each week to a stranger in trouble and made to do them some good. Kindness as a superpower is a rare idea for a chase drama, and Sequoyah plays it without a trace of the knowing, adult-shaped child that usually gets cast in these parts. She is watchful, stubborn and occasionally very funny, and when the writing gives her something to look at rather than something to say, she carries the frame. Delroy Lindo and Kyle MacLachlan are the other reasons to stay. Lindo plays Milton Winter as a man who has done things he regrets and has decided to spend what is left of him on this one girl, and he does it with almost no raised voices. MacLachlan gives Roman Skouras a soft, reasonable manner that is far more unsettling than the standard villainy the part could have been. Steven Price scores it with low strings and long held notes, and he has the sense to go quiet whenever Bo does something impossible, which is the right instinct. For those first ten minutes we sat up. For most of the twelve episodes that followed we did not, and somewhere around the fourth episode we were bored, and then annoyed at being bored, because a series about a child who can make grown men weep with a look ought to be able to hold our attention past the adverts. The reason is the shape of each week: Bo senses a stranger, the stranger is helped, Skouras’s people arrive a scene too late, Tate and Bo argue in a borrowed car, and Channing (Jamie Chung) tells them where to go next. The pattern is set by the second episode and never once broken. The centre does not hold either. Jake McLaughlin plays Tate as a scowl with a jacket, a hard man softened one notch per episode, and the show needs us to enjoy watching him and Bo fail to get on. We did not. The lines they are given are the lines any such pair would be given, and McLaughlin delivers them as if he had been told to save something for later. Kerry Condon’s Dr. Zoe Boyle is asked to look troubled at monitors, which she does well and to no purpose. Eleven other directors take episodes after Cuarón, and ten writers are credited, and the result looks and sounds like a show made by a rota. Cuarón’s own [*Children of Men*](https://film.one/film/children-of-men), from 2006, was also about a hard man handed a vulnerable stranger he did not ask to protect, and it found the whole of the man’s life in the way he carried her. *Believe* has the same idea, at 43 minutes a week, and finds only the carrying. Against the run of supernatural-chase television it sits in the middle: better cast than most, more decent in its intentions than nearly all, and no more surprising than any. Watch the pilot, which is a real piece of work and stands on its own. Whether you go on from there depends on how much you want to see Sequoyah and Lindo in a series that never gives them a second week as good as the first. *Fi1m score 49, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say The reviews lean mixed to negative, and none of the six is positive. Where praise exists it clusters almost entirely on Cuarón’s direction of the pilot: the long single takes, the opening steadicam sequence and the look of the thing are singled out again and again. The child performance at the centre earns a nod, and The AV Club credits the show’s emphasis on compassion and non-violence as an unusual quality in a conspiracy thriller. The reservations cluster on the writing. Most critics find the premise derivative of earlier supernatural conspiracy series, the dialogue pulpy, the characters thin and the weekly procedural format hard to believe in. The spread is fairly narrow, from grudging near-passes down to outright dismissal; Paste is the harshest, calling the pilot simply bad and asking why Cuarón and Abrams attached themselves to it, while Variety doubts it can hold interest across a season. Only Vulture admits to some curiosity about how it will sustain itself. ### Reviews we read (6) - **The AV Club**, Brandon Nowalk (C+): The critic finds the pilot derivative of other supernatural conspiracy shows but praises its thematic emphasis on compassion, non-violence, and higher ideals along with Cuarón's earthy, dynamic direction in key sequences. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/the-latest-supernatural-drama-just-wants-us-to-believe-1798179727) - **The Guardian** (60/100, inferred): The pilot shows promise through Cuarón's visual style and strong child performance but struggles with pulpy dialogue and a potentially cloying premise. The long single takes and effects are singled out for praise. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/mar/27/alfonso-cuaron-gravity-believe-oscar-winning-director-tv-sci-fi-fantasy) - **Vulture**, Matt Zoller Seitz (40/100, inferred): The critic views the series as overly plot-driven and lacking personality or inner lives for its characters, comparing it unfavorably to stronger influences while noting some curiosity about how it will sustain itself. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2014/03/tv-review-nbc-believe.html) - **Variety**, Brian Lowry (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the pilot underwhelming despite the star power of Abrams and Cuarón, noting it requires embracing illogical mystical elements and sets up an old-fashioned procedural unlikely to sustain long-term interest. Some praise for beautiful images but overall skepticism about the series' prospects on NBC. [Read](https://variety.com/2014/tv/reviews/tv-review-believe-1201122890/) - **Den of Geek**, David Crow (2.5/5): The critic praises the ambitious premise and stunning opening steadicam sequence directed by Cuarón but finds the rest of the pilot muddled with weak character chemistry and unconvincing archetypes that fail to sell the weekly format. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/believe-pilot-review/) - **Paste**, Madina Papadopoulos (3.7/10): The critic finds the pilot episode bad, full of clichés, plot holes, and boring characters that make the story hard to believe or invest in. They single out the weak execution and question why Cuarón and Abrams attached themselves to such unpromising material. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/believe-review-pilot) ## Details - **Created by:** Mark Friedman, Alfonso Cuarón - **Creator:** Mark Friedman, Alfonso Cuarón - **Director:** Alfonso Cuarón, Sam Hill, Omar Madha, Fred Toye, Roxann Dawson, Steve Shill, Bart Freundlich, Stephen Williams, David Boyd, Jonas Pate, Eric Stoltz, Michael Offer - **Writer:** Alfonso Cuarón, Mark Friedman, Jonas Pate, Nick Antosca, Seamus Kevin Fahey, Holly Harold, Vim Shanmugam, Brynn Malone, Dave Erickson, Melisa Wallack - **Music:** Steven Price - **Producer:** David DeClerque, Seamus Kevin Fahey, Athena Wickham - **Cast:** Jake McLaughlin as Willam Tate; Johnny Sequoyah as Bo Adams; Katie McClellan as Leeds; Delroy Lindo as Dr. Milton Winter; Kerry Condon as Dr. Zoe Boyle; Kyle MacLachlan as Roman Skouras; Jamie Chung as Channing; John Ventimiglia - **Runtime:** 43m - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-14 - **Release (the US):** 10 March 2014 - **Genres:** Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Drama ## Where to watch in the US - Tubi: free, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Midnight Special* (2016): A father, a gifted boy and a very long drive, taken seriously for once. - *Escape to Witch Mountain* (1975): Two psychic children, a rich man who wants them, and a camper van. - *Paper Moon* (1973): Grown man, small girl, borrowed cars; the arguing is far better written here. - *Stranger Things* (2016), Fi1m 77: A girl with powers on the run, and a show that knows how to pace her. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/stranger-things.md) - *Children of Men* (2006), Fi1m 85: Cuarón’s own version of the idea, with long takes that pay off. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/children-of-men.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/believe