Roush Review: ‘True Lies’ on TV Feels Like ‘Alias’ on Helium
Review
True Lies
We’ve heard of being married to your job, but this is ridiculous. True Lies wouldn’t have it any other way.
Based on James Cameron’s hit 1994 movie, CBS‘ breezily enjoyable action-comedy series remake feels like Alias on helium, leaning into the goofy premise where saving the world can take a back seat to unclogging the sink in a home where the master bathroom turns out to be a secret safe room.
(Credit: Alan Markfield/CBS ©2021 CBS Broadcasting)
While lacking the megastar wattage of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis, charismatic series leads Steve Howey (Shameless) and Ginger Gonzaga (She-Hulk) are absurdly gorgeous as suburban parents Harry and Helen Tasker. For 17 years, superspy Harry has lied to the family (including two so-far generic adolescents) with his cover identity as a humdrum computer salesman who’s on the road a lot. When Helen suspects he’s having an affair, Harry impulsively whisks her to Paris mid-mission to prove her wrong, and she learns the truth about her mate’s clandestine doings the hard way.
By the end of Wednesday’s lavishly produced pilot, Helen has been tied up, dangled from a helicopter (a nod to the movie) and recruited to join Harry’s team in the covert Omega Sector. Good thing this yoga mom and show-off linguistics prof can hold her own while holding her amusingly sheepish hunk-mate accountable for this mess. (“If we live through this, you’re sleeping on the couch,” she quips.)
You might wish Harry’s fellow spies had more personality, or their mission improbables to be a bit less cartoonish. (I do like the fact that the next-door-neighbor babysitter is a trained assassin, and also pretty good when it comes to whipping up a lasagna.) But edginess is not the point here, and if it’s pure enjoyable escapism you’re after, True Lies is hard to beat. “Just think of it as a fantasy that we get to live in,” Harry advises his astonished partner during one of the couple’s more luxurious European escapades.
Though even he balks when newbie Helen bonds with a notorious but nerdy assassin (Matthew Lillard, sensational) in a terrific late-March episode. “‘The Wolf’ isn’t friend material,” Harry warns, but more offbeat characters like The Wolf could make the new True Lies a howling success.
True Lies, Series Premiere, Wednesday, March 1, 10/9c, CBS
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