Tim Roth stars a man who has spent twenty years learning about the human face and how it’s subtle and almost hidden ticks reveal the hidden emotions of the people he interviews. Lie to Me is a pretty good show, but like all who-done-its with a super smart detective, the tricks of the face reader’s trade have to be exaggerated for the screen.
Just as the hero of Numbers has to solve all his crimes with math and the Ghost Whisperer has to see dead people, the star of Lie to Me sees liars all around him. One of the plot elements has a new hire at the company who can see when our hero himself is lying, to which he replies- Get used to it.
The Fox website says Lie to Me is based on the real-life scientific discoveries of Paul Ekman. The series follows Roth’s Lightman and his team of deception experts as they assist law enforcement and government agencies to expose the truth behind the lies. Could watching Lie to Me teach the average person to spot the tell-tell signs of lying and win big at poker games? Anything is possible, but I read books about eye shifting and raised eyebrows years ago and the knowledge never helped me much. Of course, I am not an obsessive like our hero.
One of the better gimmicks in the show is in the intros and outros for commercial breaks where we are shown famous people lying and performing the same facial expressions as the lairs in the show. Ex-Presidents are a favorite target of these little jabs, with a couple of shots Vice President Chaney tossed in for good measure. There are a lot of shots of famous lairs with exaggerated expressions, and it is kind of fun to see these images tied to the story.
There is a fun little Lie Detector Test on the Fox website which uses some of the tricks and techniques used on Lie To Me. One of the tests shows a person with a blank face, then flashes an image of that person with an expression, and your supposed to tell what expression was flashed on the screen. Even when I saw the expression I still got it wrong a couple of times, I guess surprise and fear look a little too much alike for me. It was fun taking the test, my score was Average-so I guess I won’t be getting a job with Dr Lightman anytime soon.
I like Lie To Me and I like that Tim Roth still has an accent, I’ve always been a bit of an Anglophile.
