SummaryLaura Nielson (Joanne Froggatt), a teacher ends her date with Andrew Earlham (Ioan Gruffudd), a surgeon with a son at her school, with an accusation in this six-part thriller written and created by Harry and Jack Williams.
SummaryLaura Nielson (Joanne Froggatt), a teacher ends her date with Andrew Earlham (Ioan Gruffudd), a surgeon with a son at her school, with an accusation in this six-part thriller written and created by Harry and Jack Williams.
The two main performances, on which the entire series rests, are both astonishing: Joanne Froggatt, so solid in Downton Abbey, is captivatingly fragile, swaying from likable to unstable in a matter of moments. And we’re so used to seeing Ioan Gruffudd as the romantic hero, it’s fascinating to see him offer such a multi-faceted performance, effortlessly shifting between the light and the dark.
Liar is a tangle of trigger alerts, filled with “Fatal Attraction”-ish moments of doubt and debate in a claustrophobically small community of subplots. I skipped ahead to make sure the ending is worth the effort, and for the most part, it is.
The twists escalate into a feverish peak of outrageous melodrama, making Fatal Attraction look mellow. Even so, it's enjoyable to the end, setting up a second season I'm even more eager to see. [2-15 Oct 2017, p.15]
About four hours into this six-episode series I just wanted to know how it all turned out so that I could be free of these mostly-unpleasant people. That I stayed to the end is a measure of the Williams brothers’ skill as plot-creators, I guess, but it’s also not a huge recommendation.
Neither consistently responsible nor transportingly engrossing, Liar ends up undermining its admirable aims with a series of preposterous twists and characterizations. Flailing crusades like Laura's are seldom so intensely felt--or so groan-inducingly disappointing.