Lie to Me

Imagine someone as abrasive and inappropriate as House, and you've got Tim Roth as Dr. Cal Lightman.

Dr. Lightman's company specializes in discerning whether or not people are telling the truth. They work with all areas of law enforcement, including the FBI, corporations, and different government departments. Their work is based on the research of Dr. Paul Ekman, who served as an adviser on the series.

The work of the Lightman Group revolves around reading people's facial expressions, voices, eye pupils, and gestures to tell if someone is being truthful.

Cal's business partner Gillian is played by the beautiful Kelli Williams, and her cool, calm demeanor is wonderful juxtaposition to Lightman's often flamboyant behavior. Tim Roth, sporting his Cockney accent, is quirky Lightman to a T- he stands in people's personal space, looks them straight in the eye, and tells them they're lying. The rest of the cast - Brendan Hines, Monica Raymond, Hayley McFarland, and Mekhi Phifer provide excellent support.

Original and offbeat, "Lie to Me" is an excellent series that unfortunately only ran three years. It's well worth seeing.

Last night I watched the premiere of Lie to Me on Fox. I'd seen the previews for months, and when I saw that Tim Roth was coming to television, him being one of my favorite actors, I was both excited and dubious at the same time. Another of my favorite actors, Christian Slater, had made an awesome TV debut on My Own Worst Enemy. But the show had been canceled, and I honestly didn't want to see the same thing happen to as great an actor as Tim Roth.

But last night's pilot delivered many great performances, not only from Roth, but the supporting guest cast as well. The episode itself had a pleasant mixture of drama, comedy, and sharp dialog.

Despite what some may think, it is possible to tell from a show's pilot whether or not the show will succeed. From what I saw last night, I can see this show going a long, long way. The formula that the show's staff have come up with is, yes, still in its conceptual stages. But they're definitely on to something, and I hope to see a rising popularity in America for Dr. Lightman and his team.

Lie to Me is a very interesting series, with a lot of humor and a very interesting premise in my opinion. In addition the 4 Cast members all play their role very good and add to the show's freshness.

Tim Roth (great as always!) plays Dr. Cal Lightman, a human lie-detector, who's able to detect any lie from people's body language. That ability comes in handy when catching criminals, but it also provides him with the misfortune of always knowing when someone is not honest with him, sometimes leading to unfortunate situations. Lightman is a cynic and unpleasant character, who's willing to do anything to find out if someone is telling the truth or not.

The series also features a strong supporting cast, including Kelli Williams as Dr. Gillian Foster, whose husband is cheating on her, a fact everyone of her colleagues is aware of, except herself. Brendan Hines' character is always telling the truth no matter how embarrassing and Monica Raymund starrs as Ria Torres, who has the natural ability of seeing if someone is lying. That often leads to conflict with Lightman, who refuses to believe her ability is as accurate as his, since he needed years of training, while she was just born with her talent.

Yes, there are parallels with other series, especially "The Mentalist", but those are pretty much limited to the ability of the main character being able to detect the truth from people's movements and voices. Besides "Lie to Me" is focused on the science of detecting lies, something completely ignored in "The Mentalist". For example, it will take a person who's telling the truth longer to respond than one who's lying, because the one telling the truth needs to think about the answer.

The only real flaw after 5 episodes is in my opinion that not enough character history is provided. We literally don't know anything about the characters, except a few details. I have no doubt we'll eventually find out more, but it's about time they start. All in all, the series is great fun and entertainment, and maybe you'll be able to pick up one or the other lie in the future, thanks to Lightman's group.

It started off as a brilliant premise. The first episode gripped me with its ingenuity - it's a fantastic idea to analyse the body language and verbal nuances of not only criminals but regular people. Maybe a little far-fetched at times but incredibly interesting. Cal was eccentric, a British 'House' maybe, but I enjoyed his acting and although I usually don't like mixing British and American actors in one cast I thought that in Lie to Me, it worked swimmingly. It's somewhat reminiscent of the show 'Psych', but with better actors, fewer jokes and a different target audience.

Now I'm watching season 3 and I'm considering not watching the rest. It's almost as if the writers assumed that their viewers all watched from the very first episode. No more clever observations with body language, no more quick zooms to show the audience what emotion the accused is showing, no more focus on the original premise. Not only do I find that there's less and less observation going on and more focus on guesswork and 'gut feelings', but it seems the range of emotions being detected has literally been reduced to the recurring 'guilt', 'fear' and 'shame'. Where is the broad range? Where is what we saw in season 1? It feels like the writers assume that their viewers already know the whole shtick of being shown exactly how a character displays a certain emotion, skips that part and goes straight to the diagnoses. Not only that but it seems that the characters are manipulated less and less and it's become more about tricking the characters into coming to the Lightman Group and being interrogated in the box.

I've also noticed that the 3 supporting characters are constantly being berated by Cal Lightman. He seems to give less and less weight to their opinions and it always silently criticising them. This wouldn't bother me had it been that way from the start - but as the character of Cal becomes less likable due to his now highly exaggerated eccentricity, his two subordinates are reduced to bumbling, guessing idiots in his presence. They rarely make intelligent observations - in fact...where did the science even go in this program?!

Another thing I don't enjoy generally in programs, something that has been used here, is the emphasis on Cal's shallow subplot. Just as the science is mentioned less, so the back story of Cal Lightman is emphasised. Granted, he and the actor who plays his daughter have incredible on-screen chemistry and she is rather likable with her ability to call her father out on his faults, all while flashing her big doey eyes. But in my opinion, her character is overly mature for a 16- year-old girl and it's becoming irritating that she constantly barges into her father's office demanding to know what he's up to. The others respond to her as if she were their boss, not as if she were a 16-year- old girl with no business being around the office. And...can someone tell her to change her facial expression? Pretty please?

Overall I enjoy the show but I really wish the writers would stay true to the original intent of the show - to play around with the fascinating science of human behaviour and come up with mysteries that can be cleverly unwoven by behavioural observation, rather than simply interrogating every single witness and showing a gros plan of their apparently scared faces. I'm giving this a 5 because the first season was brilliant, and as its quality decreased, so did the score.

So far I've only seen the pilot episode. I admit it. I've got a mad man-crush for this show.

The show's about Dr. Cal Lightman (Tim Roth) as a sort of a superhero. He's a human lie detector. He looks for dozens of subtle tells in the face and on the body. He's studied human communication so intensely that he always knows if someone is concealing something.

His company, so far, is involved with police and political matters. There's some significant room to bring in lots of personal interplay as well (we've seen a glimpse of that already).

This is from Imagine Entertainment, the company that does 24. I hope that, as the show evolves, that the fate of the planet doesn't rest on everything that Dr. Lightman does and says. One Jack Bauer is plenty, thanks.

I also hope that the show doesn't become driven by an overarching nemesis. Shows with a strong internal mythology and skin-tight story arcs can be fun, but we've seen so much of them lately that I wouldn't mind seeing the episodic adventures of a flawed hero trying to do something right.