In the week of the Harvey Weinstein furore and the #metoo campaign highlighting how widespread sexual harassment and abuse still are in our times, it seemed pertinent to write about this ITV drama, which came to its chilling conclusion this week.
Not quite as sensitively handled as Broadchurch 3 on the matter of rape (no Olivia Colman for starters), Liar still packed a punch, highlighting a woman's genuine fears that she won't be believed if she reports an attack to the police. But that's how this drama worked - the clue was in the title. Just who was the liar? Laura Nielson or Andrew Earlham? How did such a promising-looking date turn so sour? For judging how the initial dinner was going, without the drugs, consensual sex looked as though it would probably very much have been on the cards. It seemed impossible that such a charming, conventionally good-looking, successful and intelligent man could commit such a callous and heinous act. The victim had a history of mental illness and had something in her past which threatened to come out, so had she just made it all up, to right a wrong, as a rebound from her failed relationship, or just because she couldn't separate fiction from truth? Andrew seemed a broken yet justifiably angry man after her accusations.
But people are never what they seem. Apart from the sleazy school headteacher from Laura's past played by Peter Davison, who was exactly what he seemed. Even the charming surgeon saw straight through him and his brand of sexual harassment (which also went unpunished thanks to a combination of fear and blackmail and the victim's sense of hopelessness - much more of a Weinstein situation).
As the series progressed, it became clear that Laura was the victim of lie after lie - not just at the hands of Andrew Earlham, but closer to home too, at those of her sister and ex partner, who had been having an affair. And the truth behind Andrew Earlham became sicker and sicker. A long history of drugged and abused women, crushed, confused, unable to prove a thing. A dead ex-wife. But ultimately two women determined to seek justice, catch him out, and send him to jail.
The police weren't much cop (despite one of the victims being a cop), although Earlham had made his tracks hard to find, and the undercover policewoman was just too slow with her syringe of wine. No one seemed to spot Earlham's regular visits to see his mum and the possibility that she might have storage facilities that needed checking. Laura figured it out all by herself, the final prompt she needed coming from Andrew's careless slip of the tongue about "playing back" his assault. Yes, he had videoed every depraved and foul moment of what he did to these unconscious women.
The central performances, particularly from Joanne Froggatt, were superb, but the series wasn't an easy watch. And instead of retribution, of seeing Andrew get his comeuppance, or one last showdown between the two main characters, the ending was a bit of a damp squib. The carer's phonecall warning Andrew of Laura prying in the shed did not provoke a wild car chase out to the docks. Instead, Laura was able to hand the video and drug evidence into the police unheeded. Andrew was declared missing, and only as the credits rolled was he spotted lying in the marshes with his throat slit. Then series 2 was announced. Where presumably it will be revealed exactly who prevented him entering a court of law. Cos it's pretty difficult to cut your own throat. Though maybe not if you are an experienced surgeon.
