i downloaded and started it today based on your recommendation/the trailer. i'm also two episodes in. i really like the story itself but i can't help but feeling that Spoiler the present day/1 year in the past narrative split was a bit unnecessary and ruins my own enjoyment of the story. you can make an educated guess as to who perpetuated the shooting. you even see the gun itself in ep 2 in the safe/at the scene. so if the story is about descent into radicalizism and if that's someone jumping off or being pushed, why spoil it? obviously i have more episodes to watch so i could be way off.
so i'm through four episodes and while i really like raza (except what happened at the wedding), i think the show would be way better if it focused on gabe/charlie, holly, the wife, and gabe and holly's boss. their interactions and who's hiding what is more interesting than raza's family stuff and the albanian things. it's also just smarter and less cliche imo. episode four was really good, though. the beginning with the shooting was sad as hell.
Finished it today. It was predictable after ~ep 2-3 but it was still decent. Still thought the wife/gabe/charlie + holly dynamic was more interesting than any of the terrorist chasing. Episode 4 was the pinnacle of the show imo. i thought it was weird that the albanians were never shown again after it was clear that they weren't the cell - i don't see raza untangling himself from that nor being an willing participant - and as a result, discovering the cell and then solving the plot felt rushed a bit. despite favoring all of the detective drama, i thought raza as an actor was really good. that's his first acting gig ever? pretty surprising.
Banged it out this weekend. I thought all the performances were pretty good, not just Raza... though some of the "descent into Charlie" moments were a little clumsy (particularly during the late night visit with Holly). I was pretty entertained overall but it felt weird and strained to have the cause of the shooting come pretty much out of left field the way that it did. Seems like a weak effort to illustrate that we've got fragile psyches and that it doesn't take the radicals you expect to make something awful happen. ...but if that's the case why are we in the world of counterterrorism at all? All of that said, I will say I enjoyed the glimpse at immigrant communities under the stress of the modern war on terror.
Overall, I definitely enjoyed it. Could have done without the Spoiler shooting. Had a feeling it would be nasir when he started hanging out with the keyboard jihadi guy, but I dont think it meshed well with the show. Maybe if it was 10 or 13 episodes, they could have fleshed it out a little better. Really enjoyed the whole Gabe/Charlie thing even though they could have made some of the descent moments a little better like you said. Would have been more than okay if the whole first season dealt with his UC work with the neo nazis, and then get into the counter terror stuff in season 2. Acting was solid all around, for me. I really liked Holly and Dadir. 7.0-7.5/10 I think.