Liaison review: What's French for bad TV?

Liaison, the first ever French-English series for AppleTV+, is penned by French writer and showrunner Virginie Brac and directed by Stephen Hopkins, who also helmed the first season of 24. It’s a political thriller, with lots of espionage, fighting, chases, guns, explosions, and a major focus on hacking, which means tense close-ups of password-entry boxes and code scrolling across computer screens like everything runs on Windows 98. This show also has actors credibly switching from French to English to Arabic as locations demand, which is impressive and definitely better than having French characters speak English with a French (or worse, British) accent. Then again, this series also has lines like, “Go through that door and this last week will feel like a health spa,” and, “WHERE ARE THE HACKERS?” If you like that dialogue, and you enjoy a quick pace and you prefer motifs, plot twists, and stakes that feel, well, familiar, then this could be a very good show for you.

Liaison’s main focus is on two former lovers, Gabriel Delage (Vincent Cassel) and Alison Rowdy (Eva Green), who have to face their shared past to save some nice hackers and stop some bad ones. Gabriel is a cool, French private contractor spy guy who loves to put on glasses, a construction vest, or even just a beanie, and blend into all kinds of situations. Alison … gets a lot of calls from her boss, a British Minister (they never say of what) named Richard Banks (Peter Mullan). She goes to important meetings, too, always dressed in black and sulking and/or smirking around. We find out in a later episode that she is Banks’ “personal secretary” after hours of wondering, what IS her job? We also discover that she got that gig through her dad, who was a big important NATO person who is now retired and lives in a castle.

There is exactly one woman in this show who did not land her position through her father or a lover, an advisor to the French president, and even she says of herself, “the president doesn’t like me. I’m a woman.” Boo! Most of the women characters are called a bitch or some other derogatory term more than once throughout the series. Meanwhile, every man is explained as having gotten to where he is by being either “a genius,” “a legend,” “a real pro,” “brilliant,” or “beyond reproach.” That’s why things always seem to work out for them, why Gabriel can punch someone in a two-minute elevator fight and magically lift the man’s Druze-star-shaped USB drive that looks like no thumb drive that has ever existed outside of this show. Anyway, with few exceptions, the men are all smart and brave, and we should just accept it without question, mmkay?

Since this show is billed as a contemporary political thriller, primarily set in the U.K., the main conflict is all Brexit’s fault. Basically, Britain has become vulnerable to hackers since cutting ties with the EU, and their Central Intelligence Office gets Rick Rolled by an 8-bit Puss in Boots. At first, it’s dismissed as some kid who learned how to hack the U.K. on YouTube or something, but the threats escalate. London’s flood control system goes haywire, trains crash into each other, a plane flies too close to some buildings, and the city lights blink all weird. The Brits need to sign a security deal with the EU ASAP, or they’ll have to go through a shady and mysterious private company. The French have to help, too, but they barely want to, what with the Brexiting and all.

So that’s the political stuff. What about the steamy stuff? This show is called Liaison. The very first moment reestablishing the lovers’ connection has Gabriel standing outside Alison’s freaking window in the rain (creep). They press their faces against the glass at each other (ew). When she asks how he found her, he responds with “I always know where you are” (nope). Later, he almost attacks her when he’s lurking in a hospital room in a doctor disguise, and she walks in behind the curtain thing (hot?). Other than that, it’s pretty chaste—between the two of them, at least. The only time they actually full-on make out, with eyes closed and everything, is when they’re getting shot at, as is customary in this type of program. And their chemistry isn’t especially compelling anyway, even if their encounters weren’t so weird. As with many things in this show, we think we’re meant to just take their word that this a powerful romance.

Overall, Liaison is entertaining in a way that a ride can be: all experience, little substance. It offers plenty of twists for twists’ sake and people winding up dead or shot or stabbed a little. And hey, the music is fun. They play that song “Teardrop” by Massive Attack like five times across six episodes. Hadn’t heard that one in a while. And the theme song is slinky-cool and reminiscent of Bond themes with an appealing warm-hued visual aesthetic and glitchy-looking buildings, so that’s good. But couldn’t it also have been neat if someone had just sung the word “liaison” to the tune of Fleetwood Mack’s “Rhiannon” instead? Maybe season two. Just kidding. There shouldn’t be one.