Created by French writer Virginie Brac, the six-part espionage thriller Liaison lacks an inventive approach or even a satisfying character-driven angle to set it apart from its ilk. Despite involving hackers, politicians, mercenaries, and secret agents the world over (including in Syria, France, England, and Belgium), the Apple TV+ series fails to deliver anything remotely intriguing amid its tumultuous, complicated plot.
The first episode opens on two Damascan hackers, Walid (Marco Horanieh) and Samir (Aziz Dyab), who nearly get caught after hacking a Syrian police server and discovering information about a planned terrorist attack. When an agency connected to the French secret service offers to help Walid and Samir leave the country in exchange for the intel, mercenary and ex-Foreign Legion member Gabriel Delage (Vincent Cassel) is sent to smuggle the hackers out of Syria.
Naturally, the operation goes sideways and Delage is captured by officials of the Syrian intelligence services. After watching the soldiers drag him away, Walid and Samir promptly escape, believing that the French agency tried to trick them. Thanks to the passports provided by Delage—who, unbeknownst to the two hackers, has evaded torture and imprisonment—they cross the Turkish border and fly to England, where their uncle awaits them.
On paper, all this might sound like an exciting opening for an espionage caper, but it ultimately lacks the suspense and stakes necessary for a real nail-biter. And this weakness extends to scenes at the National Cyber Security Centre in London, where Alison Rowdy (Eva Green) and her boss, Richard Banks (Peter Mullan), oversee an investigation to identify a different potential hack by a terrorist group. The clues to the case lead them to Walid, Samir, and Delage, and a hunt for the USB key containing the intel ensues between the Brit and French governments.
The only mildly compelling aspect of the story involves Delage and Alison’s shared history as rioters, which comes as a quasi-twist at the end of the first episode. There’s a palpable sexual tension and an unspoken conflict between the two, but the series takes its sweet time unraveling the origins of that dynamic, by which point your curiosity will likely have waned. Cassel and Green try their best to breathe some life into these characters, especially in moments where they stare at each other with lavish desire, but Cassel’s mellow charisma and Green’s mysterious aura aren’t enough to overcome the show’s stock characterizations.
Liaison is riddled with plot points—secret affairs, payoffs to men in high positions, and personal betrayals—that provide reasons for the story to move in a convenient direction. And despite operating in three different countries, Delage and Alison always seems to bump into each other at the right place and the right time. The decisions they make don’t seem to stem naturally from who they are, but from what the narrative needs them to be. Regrettably, this makes it nearly impossible to find anything to engage with in what amounts to a mediocre B thriller.
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