Lie To Me

Image by LiGado em Série via Flickr

In the continuing trend of American network shows with non-American leads, NTV7 started showing Lie To Me about a month ago and as I was home at the time, I decided to watch the pilot for the heck of it.

Lie To Me is (yet another) crime solving drama using actual psychology - well, the character of Dr. Cal Lightman is loosely based on real life psychologist Dr Paul Ekman (who's known for his research on facial microexpressions and body language), who is also scientific advisor on the show, so you know it's not total bull shit. (Dramatised, sure - bull shit, no) Dr Ekman also writes analyses on each episode here.

The show, I just realised, is the anti-thesis of Bones, another show on Fox. Hmm.

From the Wikipedia article...

"In the show, Dr. Cal Lightman and his colleagues in The Lightman Group accept assignments from third parties (commonly local and federal law enforcement), and assist in investigations, reaching the truth through applied psychology: interpreting microexpressions, through the Facial Action Coding System, and body language."(Wikipedia, 2009)

First of all - I know it's only TV, but you got to admit, it's a pretty cool concept.

I find that sometimes they take too long to reach some conclusions. There was one episode where they suspect a chief justice nominee for killing her own daughter because she didn't show any sadness on her face. It took about 10 minutes of show to find that they can't "read" her was because she had Botox, duh. If you can get to conclusions before the characters on the show do, something is a little off. Or I watch way too much TV.

I've never really seen a lot of the movies Tim Roth was in (there was the Planet of the Apes remake, but he was in monkey makeup, so that hardly counts...) and he frankly looks more the baddie type than the good guy. His character does whatever it takes to get the truth, the end justifies the means. At least his character's English and he doesn't have to sound American for the role, like Hugh Laurie :P His character also doesn't have perfect posture, which gives us slouchers something less to live up to.

Any show that doesn't put down psychology is alright in my books. I'm glad that the show has been renewed for a second season, but for some reason I think it'll probably have a four season run, tops. Hope I'm wrong.