The Innocents arrived in 2018 as a supernatural drama built around identity rather than spectacle, following two teenagers whose escape plan runs straight into something neither of them can explain. Created and directed by Hania Elkington, the eight-episode series moves at a deliberately slow burn, more interested in what its characters become than in how it happens.
What is The Innocents about?
The series centers on a pair of young runaways whose plan for an ordinary new life together starts to unravel almost immediately, as one of them begins showing signs of an ability that puts everyone around her at risk. Guy Pearce plays a figure from her past with his own stake in controlling what she can do, and the show splits its time between the fugitives on the run and the institution trying to track them down. Sorcha Groundsell and Percelle Ascott lead as the couple at the center, with Laura Birn, Johannes Haukur Johannesson, and Sam Hazeldine filling out the adults circling them. The series treats its central premise less as a thriller hook and more as a metaphor for the disorientation of growing up and losing control of your own body and choices, and it commits to that tone across the full season rather than resolving things quickly.
About the cast
Sorcha Groundsell and Percelle Ascott share the emotional core of the series as the two leads, while Guy Pearce brings a controlled menace to a character who complicates their escape at every turn. Laura Birn, Johannes Haukur Johannesson, and Sam Hazeldine round out the supporting cast pursuing or protecting the pair from different sides.
Context & significance
Produced for streaming and released as a single eight-episode season, The Innocents was made in the United States with a British and Scandinavian cast, giving it a slightly unplaced, international feel that suits its story of characters caught between identities. Its slow-drip approach to revealing the rules of its own premise set it apart from more plot-driven genre shows of the same period, and it remains a self-contained season rather than an ongoing series.
Watching The Innocents on Ktime
The Innocents is free to read about on K-Time, with the full season available to stream after logging into a K-Time account. The platform is designed around a Farsi-first experience for Persian-speaking viewers, alongside the series' original English audio.