J'ai menti

This French thriller takes a fairly standard trope and does a fairly decent job with it. The acting is good, the relationships male sense. The writing is sometimes pretty good, especially some of the dialogue, yet ultimately the show has some moments that are just mediocre writing, plotwise. And there is one blatant case of audience manipulation to get us thinking in a certain direction that is just sloppy. And the ending, well, it works but is a bit meh. So, the show is uneven. It could certainly be worth watching if you find yourself hankering for some Eurothriller action, but don't rush out and start watching it immediately. There's better out there, but there's also quite a bit worse.

Walter presents on 4 is showing some great TV on catch up and this is one of the best. Spiral of Lies is a six-part crime drama that's addictive from the very start. The opening sequence has more packed into a few minutes than some shows do in an entire episode. Somehow Spiral of Lies manages to keep that pace up for six full episodes but it seems perfectly timed and never drawn out like so many other shows. The cast are superb and deliver totally convincing performances. Interestingly there are no goodies or perfect people in this and the characters are all flawed which adds to the appeal. There's never a dull moment. Unusually for me I even noticed how I liked the editing.

The French made this story very believable with only a few 'aye right' moments which were not directly related to the story so not worthy of mention. The ending, which can so often be a let down in shows like this, delivers the goods and doesn't descend into silliness as so often happens with these shows. I haven't ruled out watching it again.

The quality of this French TV show is exceptional and thanks to Walter Presents and Channel 4 we can all watch it. We binged watched it in a few evenings. We find ourselves making greater use of this service and watching non-English speaking shows and we are learning that so many of them are far far better than what we are seeing from our own channels. Foreign language TV is steadily becoming our first choice.

I liked it, it had substance, some minor plots. Good acting. Maybe the last episode and the reveal were a little less surprising, is all. I recommand it.