"Liaison."

The French-British thriller on Apple TV+ gets the Two Episode Test.

Well, we’re on quite a roll here now with the Two Episode Test’s triumphant return, but I have to confess I was just looking for a show where — everybody all together now — shit blows up and there’s some smarts behind the drama.

I trundled downstairs recently just looking for escapism and lo and behold, after a little scrolling, I found what I thought would fit the bill. Eva Green, Vincent Cassell — some surly French eye candy right there — plus Peter Mullan ffs. I mean, that was enough right there but then I ignored the advice I always give you people and watched the trailer and, well, a lot of shit seemed to be blowing up with lots of action and an intricate plot I’m sure would come undone but was good enough to launch, and away I went.

When you don’t have to be hyper connected anymore, as a critic, to what’s coming out in the next six months or so, little bits of timely coincidence are a great joy. Like this: “Liaison” wasn’t, I soon found out, some foreign show from, say, 2020 that I’d missed but now could marinate in — it had come out, in fact, just two weeks prior and there were only two episodes. Imagine fucking that. A sign, no?

I mean, I had a bowl of ice cream and I was going to watch anyway, but now it would work splendidly for this Two Episode Test. When your escapism is your work, things are going swell.

“Liaison” is just French enough, and just British enough to feel not quite “2023 Americana TV” but more like, well, 2020. Or earlier. What that means is that it quickly proved to move fast, be pretty smart, cut a number of corners in scenes others might have received notes on and pushed forward with action galore, some sneaky mysteries hidden inside (including the opening credits!) and enough heft from the three previously named actors to make you not question when things seemed, well, maybe too convenient or unnecessarily confusing.

The question was, as it always is, would it last?