Tonight marks the debut of a new show on Fox, "Lie to Me." At least, tonight, 21 Jan 09, Fox plans to show the pilot for a TV series called "Lie to Me", but IMDB is silent on whether they've filmed any episodes beyond the pilot. Fox's own website for new shows is strangely muted in how much detail it provides for "Lie to Me". However, the previews for this new show have been all over Fox's broadcasts, so I saw several during the NFL games last Sunday.
What I find most interesting about the new show is how similar the role for Tim Roth appears to another of his roles, that of James Walter Wayland in Deceiver (1997). For those readers unfamiliar with that movie, it came not long after Roth's star turns in such Quentin Tarantino films as Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), and Four Rooms (1995). That stretch capped an impressive run of roles for Roth that started with his playing of Gildenstern in that retelling of the classic Shakespeare story Hamlet, but from the point of view of the hired assassins, Rosencrantz & Gildenstern Are Dead (1990).
That movie was simply brilliant, and done by the same writer and director who later won Oscar for Shakespeare in Love (1998), Tom Stoppard. The fact that Shakespeare in Love was a retelling of the classic story of Romeo & Juliet from a different perspective totally gave it away as a Stoppard work. It was a nice movie, but totally didn't deserve Best Picture over Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan that year.
At any rate, Roth in Deceiver plays a wealthy alcoholic who may or may not have murdered a prostitute in the park. He was the last person who saw her alive, and so the Detectives investigating the murder naturally focus their attention on Wayland. Without spoiling the ending for anyone who has not yet seen the movie, let's just say that many of the same elements shown in the previews for "Lie to Me" are also demonstrated after the Detectives hook Wayland up to a lie detector machine. Chris Penn, another veteran of some of those same Tarantino movies, and Michael Rooker did great turns as the two Detectives in the movie.
I'll probably tune in to the pilot episode tonight, just to see Roth's performance in the new show. I'll be interested to see just how similar the new role is to his past role in Deceiver. Roth seems to be an actor with an affinity for such edgy roles, so I anticipate "Lie to Me" will be good, as long as the writing works for the hour-long show.
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I am happy to report that the show was actually quite good. I've loved watching "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" for many years, and for many of the same reasons why I liked "Lie to Me": it's brainy, with some subtle interactions between the two main characters; it focuses more on why a person acts a certain way or does what they do; and the female partner, while attractive, is not some brain-dead 23-year-old crazy beautiful knockout on the show only because it's TV. This actress has more of a Diane Lane circa Murder at 1600 look to her, which is a very good thing. It was a good pilot. We'll see how the following episodes continue to flesh out the characters.
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