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Critic Reviews
- Critic score
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It’s poorly written with a bunch of things happening in the pilot that just don’t make sense.
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Secrets and Lies suffers from an American tendency to speed up and overplay, to force emotion rather than evoke it. Just as suspicion takes a little time to grow and spread, so does sophistication. But this series seems to be in a very big hurry to be over, which almost guarantees that audiences will be too.
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Ryan Phillippe does the blank thing well. Juliette Lewis, once American cinema's liveliest eccentric, is drained of life.... This show runs ten weeks. I'm out.
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It's a fairly mundane mystery populated by cardboard characters with poor decision-making skills, starting with Ben, who immediately becomes the prime suspect, and his wife Christy.
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The writing is clunky, Phillippe is stiff and Lewis overacts like a cop in some parody of cop shows.
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It’s a crisply paced suburban potboiler with a murdered child at the center, and if you’ve been sucked in by other shows in this genre you may find yourself sucked in by this one. But also feel free to be vaguely annoyed that those clever TV makers are seducing you with formulas rather than freshness.
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Will you care about this group of upscale suburban neighbors? Probably not. Will you be pulled into their web of interconnected secrets and lies? Possibly. Will you be treated to various shots of brooding Ryan Phillippe jogging, sweating and showing off his aforementioned abs? Definitely. Is that enough to keep you watching? Maybe.
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Those tired of murder mysteries will find little here to pique their interest, but for fans of the genre (or Phillippe), there’s plenty to like, making for engaging, if not appointment, viewing.
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Anyone hoping for a “Desperate Housewives” vibe (ABC’s last big Sunday hit) will be disappointed. This story unfolds as if it were told by someone overdosing on Ambien.
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The show delivers the secrets and lies, but isn't compelling enough to justify yet another story about a child's murder.
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One of the worst murder-mysteries to come along in a while, ABC’s Secrets & Lies is completely undone by its casting and writing.
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Phillippe and Lewis as the two principal characters are not potent enough to get the juices flowing in an unfolding crime tale that’s neither terrible nor scintillating.
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Lewis and Philippe have enough chemistry that his underplaying and her overplaying are a match made in whodunnit heaven. Secrets and Lies likely won't be earning any Emmy nominations, but it promises to be a juicy foray into melodramatic escapism, and sometimes, that's just what the TV-viewing evening calls for.
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Caught in this Kafkaesque nightmare, Phillippe struggles to retain some sense of reality, and he almost achieves it. But the script and his fellow actors derail him at every turn, and what begins as disquieting quickly morphs into comical.
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Secrets and Lies isn’t sloppy, based on the first two hours; it’s well-organized enough, and decently shot. But it promises to be a hollow exercise signifying nothing much.
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With a strong cast (Lewis and Phillippe in particular), the buy-in here is easy. Whether it can reach the creative heights of, say, Broadchurch, which has a similar story, remains to be seen.
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It feels observed, rather than lived in. Enacted, rather than unfolding.
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Secrets & Lies pits Ryan Phillippe and Juliette Lewis in an intense if sometimes overboiled battle of wills over the murder of a 4-year-old boy.
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Secrets and Lies is a solid, twisty version of the increasingly popular murdered-kid-sets-series-in-motion formula.
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After a relatively strong premiere, ABC’s thriller quickly becomes overheated, overwritten, and generally convoluted garbage.
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Secrets and Lies starts out stale and predictable, which really does save so much time, especially for viewers who should immediately find something else to watch.
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The two-hour pilot lacks the growly tension of that dark, nnotty Netflix thriller [The Fall]. [27 Feb 2015, p.66]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 44 out of 59
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Mixed: 4 out of 59
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Negative: 11 out of 59
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Mar 11, 2015
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Mar 25, 2015
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Mar 2, 2015