Apple TV+'s 'Liaison' Muddies Up a Cross Channel Romantic Spy Thriller

No genre may be more saturated with diplomatic anxieties than the spy thriller, and seven years since Britain voted to leave the European Union, lots of recent series have touched on the U.K.’s new standing in the continent. It makes sense why — it’s a genre featuring international suspicion, tense border-hopping, and agents with grudges against whole nation-states. Liaison, the new Franco-British series starring Eva Green and Vincent Cassel as agents with a cross-channel history, certainly commits the hardest to the technicalities of post-breakup spy work.

However, a promising start leads to a narrative muddiness, and the central love story never burns bright enough to make us persevere. What looks like a more grown-up type of thriller (both in its romance and politics) deflates by about two-thirds into the six-episode series and never picks up again.

The plot of Liaison, helpfully surmised by Wikipedia as “A thriller following French spies and terrorists,” seems robust in concept. Two Syrian hackers flee across Europe as asylum seekers, pursued by U.K. and French governments for the intel they’ve acquired while a French private security firm makes more aggressive, sinister attempts to silence their secrets. Gabriel (Cassel) is an agent with no formal allegiance to France or its intelligence agency, the DGSE, but plenty of experience on the lawful and unlawful sides of morality. Alison (Eva Green) works for the U.K. government in security, firmly rooted in bureaucracy after a chequered radical past where she was deeply entwined with Gabriel. 

When the Syrian hackers make it to Europe, Gabriel and Alison are again thrown into each other’s lives, unearthing their difficult, all-consuming feelings as well as a fierce regret for how they fell apart. Liaison works best in the early episodes where Alison and Gabriel are kept at a distance; watching her struggle to keep her loved ones in the dark about her past contrasts nicely against Gabriel's suppressing his fixation with her when he’s prowling around the field of duty. 

Green and Cassel are both exemplary actors, and there’s something entrancing about watching them pace around each other with a wary, wounded attraction. Maybe it’s because they exclusively talk to each other in French, but it feels like a much more mature relationship than we usually see in spy stories. They’re less consumed with passion and more like people trying to force pressure on a bleeding wound, and in their early hushed, gasping dialogue, there’s a tangible sense of vulnerability to people who can’t afford even the slightest slip-up.

But capable actors doing good acting is only the bare minimum, and Liaison’s stars are let down by poor material. Green especially gets a raw deal, she spends most of the series’ second half pouting on the verge of tears, and her performance always seems pointed inwards with little externalizing her traumatized feelings, making for a staggeringly inert protagonist. What’s more, keeping our lovers apart disguised that there’s not much chemistry between the actors, likely due to their clunkily written, broad strokes romance. When you reach the final climactic stretch of your spy thriller and your audience’s main wish is to get the whole ordeal over with, your show may have some issues.

Liaison may have a confusing plot, or it may have a simple plot laid out in a confusing fashion. It’s not hard to get a handle on the French vs. British agencies or the nefarious private industry agendas brewing underneath pleasant diplomacy. All the bit thriller setpieces are nicely set up and communicate everything necessary to feel engaging. But every time we pull away from these spy mechanics into our turgid love story, it feels like a waste of time.

It’s refreshing to watch a show where the stakes frequently change as the script refocuses what the story’s purpose is, but Liaison feels conflicted about what it wants us to invest in. A greater sin is that, aside from a few exceptions, our supporting cast doesn’t receive a lot of attention from the script, meaning they end up resembling walking, talking plot points — or worse, props to force our central pair to be introspective.

Directed by TV stalwart Stephen Hopkins, Liaison is constructed with a slick but rote style that doesn’t differentiate it from any of the other prestige thrillers filling up streamers at the moment. While it gestures at thornier ideas and characters than Apple TV+’s other British spy thriller, Slow Horses, it lacks that show’s tight structure and ability to ruthlessly entertain. What we’re left with is more egregious than a mediocre slog; it’s a complete waste of what is clearly a great deal of talent coming together. It makes you wonder when people are going to grow tired of producers taking advantage of streaming opportunities without offering anything of interest.

Liaison streams weekly with new episodes every Thursday through March 30, 2023.