Pilot Review: The Affair

The Affair (Showtime)
Premiered October 12 at 10pm

It’s always interesting to see how a show will hold up when its title references what can be boiled down to a single event or plotline. Promotional posters for this show featured Dominic West’s Noah and Ruth Wilson’s Alison looking guilty in the water together, the obvious perpetrators of this show-focused deed. The pilot, however, unfurls its events in a much more subtle and uncertain manner. Having just seen the Him/Her version of “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby” in which scenes are shown from each character’s perspective in their respective movies, it’s intriguing to see that device used again here albeit to much more significant effect. Whole conversations are flip-flopped as Noah and Alison recount their sides of the story to a police officer in interrogation, making it very hard to know what really happened and why they’re telling such different tales. While I’m wary of perpetual narration like that, I think it could actually work well here. This show has its own singular tone, one laced with a foreboding sense of gloom emphasized by its ordinary nature. Noah finding his seemingly suicidal and dead son at the start was dark, and the fact that they got into the car to drive off for summer vacation as a family only moments later made it seem all the more haunting since no one spoke about him. The same goes for his daughter choking at the diner, an event that immediately made the worst seem realized, only to be passed over after she had been saved. The scenes with just Noah and Alison have been pretty terrific so far, and I’m definitely interested to see where their relationship takes them, especially since they’re both married and have their share of emotional baggage to connect them. I never understand why two British actors would decide to put on American accents and star together on an American show, but it seems like they’re strong choices. I look forward to getting to know them and their illicit stories more as this season progresses.

How will it work as a series? This episode was split evenly between Noah and Alison, and I’m not sure if every episode will have the same structure, but I think that could be very worthwhile since it only covers some of the same ground and helps to really explain these characters in a way that isn’t entirely conclusive since we don’t know who to trust, if either of them.
How long will it last? I’m less confident about that, since having the pilot available online for a week before its premiere didn’t do it any favors. It was way down from “Homeland” right before it, and I think it will have to hinge on positive critical mentions to convince Showtime to bring it back for a second round.

Pilot grade: B+