ORDINARY LIES | RED PRODUCTIONS | BBC ONE
LEAD DIRECTOR ON bafta winning second season
STARRING CON O’NEIL, REBEKAH STATON, KIMBERLEY NIXON AND JOEL FRY
WRITTEN BY DANNY BROCKLEHURST, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER NICOLA SHINDLER
ordinary lies | wendy
ordinary lies | focused
ordinary lies | daughter
Press
-
Ordinary Lies viewers gripped after 'fantastic' first episode.
Daily Express
-
It was really not about spying, or lying, but about how tragedy drives people apart when they most need to be together. Clever, moral stuff and a million miles from ordinary.
Daily Express
-
See it and believe it! The Beeb's thriller about liars now rings true… the new series is instantly much more engaging. This is a six-part series, with each episode focusing on a different character and much of the storyline was given over to setting up their mini-dramas — the neurotic divorcee, the office manager receiving letters from prison and so on. It’s taken a while to get this set-up right, but Ordinary Lies now promises to be clever, rewarding television.
Daily Mail
-
Con O’Neill is utterly convincing as the troubled husband trying to find out the truth about his wife – and discovering much more than he bargained for.
Guardian
-
Along with tales of flings, mental health issues, alcohol abuse, non-answering mobiles and women trying to get pregnant or desperately trying not to, Ordinary Lies offers a raw reflection of the rich variety of personal angst in real-life Britain, an almost Chaucerian ride through modern lives and mores.
Independent
-
This new series looks set to be much stronger because, rather than being based on a single, labored deception, the “ordinary lies” of the title refers more generally to things hidden or unspoken.
The Times
-
It is time to acknowledge that Danny Brocklehurst’s serial is one of the best dramas on television this autumn.
The Times
-
The great, underused Con O’Neill retunrs to primetime after his role in Happy Valley last year. In the second series of this ensemble anthology show, he stars as Joe, a popular manager at a sportswear wholesaler. After an accident at work, he returns home to find everything not quite as he expects it, setting in motion a series of events which uncovers a wealth of family secrets and abuse. O’Neill excels as a workplace-banter legend who’s pushed to the edge.
Guardian
-
The concept is somewhere between single drama and series: to stay in one place while shifting focus from one character to another. Paul Abbott did it in Clocking Off, telling a different story each week about a group of workers in a Manchester textile plant. Jimmy McGovern exported the idea to The Street, where he opened one door at a time to find out what was going on inside. The common denominator of both series was scriptwriter-for-hire Danny Brocklehurst. Brocklehurst took the format and made it his own in Ordinary Lies… It was all held together by O’Neill, adept at switching from relentless bonhomie to febrile suspicion. Utterly gripping.
Arts Desk