Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Liaison’ On Apple TV+, Where Former Lovers Face Their Past While Chasing Down Cyberterrorists

Espionage thrillers need to do a lot to get people’s attention in 2023. No matter where the show originates from, the feel of such shows give us vibes that take us back to the premiere of Homeland in 2011 or — even worse — the first season of 24 way back in 2001. Will a new espionage thriller on Apple TV+ offer anything new?

LIAISON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A couple of guns are on a table at a party. A group of people are playing poker.

The Gist: Gabriel Delage (Vincent Cassel) is having fun at this party, but then he steps out on the balcony and grimly sips on his bourbon. We pull away and see he’s in Damascus, Syria. Elsewhere in the city, a hacker hears soldiers coming up to his loft and transfers his info to a USB drive. Samir (Aziz Dyab) and his brother Walid (Marco Horanieh) manage to escape, and contact the French Embassy, looking for asylum.

In London, the Nation Cyber Security Centre all of a sudden experiences a hack, with a crude animation of Puss N Boots singing “London Bridge Is Falling Down.” The home minister, Richard Banks (Peter Mullan), and his chief investigator, Alison Rowdy (Eva Green) seem to be much more concerned about the breach than the guy in charge of the cyber security centre, who thinks it’s an isolated incident coming from a random script kiddie that got lucky.

Delage’s contact in the French government gets in touch with him and gives him an assignment to intercept the hackers and get them to France; they have managed to hack into President Assad’s servers and they have critical intelligence that they don’t want to get into Russian or even British hands. It’s a lone-wolf operation, designed to get the hackers into French hands sooner than it would going through traditional channels. Problem is, when Delage tries to get them out, Syrian security forces ride in and start shooting. The hackers shakily go through the border with Turkey instead and go to London, where their uncle can get them jobs.

Meanwhile, a computer malfunction at the Thames Barriers causes unprecedented flooding in London. Rowdy investigates with the cyber security centre head; all signs point to a hack, but for some reason, the cyber security centre head thinks it’s just a plain malfunction. Banks, however, sides with Rowdy’s thought that something really bad is afoot.

Back in Paris, Delage’s contact tells him that he needs to go to London to find the hackers. He manages to track them down, and he gets the USB drive from Walid after a hellacious fight, but it’s password protected (duh), so they need to find Samir.

When Banks and Rowdy are briefed on this incident, Rowdy recognizes the face of the supposed diplomat chasing Walid on CCTV footage, but tries her best not to let it show that she knows him, and knows him very well.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Whenever we see a show about international terrorism and espionage, we automatically compare it to Homeland. So, yeah, Liaison is like Homeland.

Our Take: Liaison, created by Virginie Brac and Ollie Butcher, is supposed to be how the mistakes of both Rowdy’s and Delage’s past — i.e. their romantic relationship — affects the present. It’s supposed to have a lot of twists and turns and is supposed to be gritty and tense and filled with action.

But none of that registers with us by the end of the first episode. What it looks like is a kind of show we’ve seen a million times over the past couple of decades, and all it seems to do is borrow elements of previous espionage thrillers and stitch them together into something that’s professed to be new.

Middle Eastern terrorists? Check. An existential threat to a Western government? Check. A freelance operative with a troubled past? Check. A forbidden past romance that might hamper the case at hand? Check. All of those elements are ones we’ve seen in espionage shows, all done with more verve than we see here.

Don’t get us wrong; Cassel and Green will likely have great chemistry as their past is reignited on screen. But the story itself isn’t grabbing our interest at all, mainly because it isn’t providing us anything we haven’t seen before.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode, but we’re pretty sure we’ll see some as the series goes along.

Parting Shot: In a downpour, Rowdy sees a figure outside the window of the flat she shares with her attorney boyfriend Daniel Francis (Albert Onwori). It’s Delage; the two put their hands up on each side of the window to indicate that they still have feelings for each other.

Sleeper Star: Anytime Peter Mullan shows up on screen, our enjoyment of a show goes up by at least 10 percent. Here he’s one of the most blue-collar government ministers we’ve ever seen, especially when he threatens the cyber security chief, who decides to quit under the strain of this case.

Most Pilot-y Line: In order to stake out the back door of the restaurant where Samir works, Delage pretends he’s an unhoused person sleeping in the alley next to the restaurant.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Liaison is a show that leaves little to no impression on us after watching it, mainly because it feels like a cynical pastiche of espionage thrillers that came before it.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.