TV Pick of the Week: The Effects of Lying - review by Yvette Huddleston

Set in the London suburbs, The Effects of Lying by writer James Hey, opens with a familiar breakfast time scene. Naveen and his glamorous wife Sangeeta (Laila Rouass) are preparing to go to work while their moody teenage daughter Simran (Lauren Patel) makes snarky comments. It seems like a pretty normal start to the day of a pretty average household but there are hints at something darker when Simran mentions a counselling appointment that she is planning not to attend.

Then when his wife and daughter have gone, Naveen receives a phone call about some ‘material’ he needs to look at. Later we see him leaving the house watched by someone sitting in a car opposite. That turns out to be Brian (Mark Williams) who has been doing some research on Naveen’s behalf and who hands him an envelope containing old photographs and documentation that includes a birth certificate.

Things begin to unravel when Naveen, having set out for work on his bike, realises he has forgotten his phone and goes back to fetch it. He finds his daughter in the kitchen, she accuses him of spying on her, they argue and when he follows her up to her room at the top of the house to try and appease her, their conversation is interrupted by Sangeeta’s unexpected return. It soon becomes obvious she is not alone and is being unfaithful to her husband. The identity of the man she is having an affair with is another shock.

Billed, a little misleadingly, as a comedy-drama, there are some tonal shifts that jar but there is much to praise here. The writing is top-notch and what Hey’s script does very well is to capture the tension, guilt and sadness within a dysfunctional family. As the title suggests there are plenty of secrets and lies that have contributed to that dysfunction and the well-constructed narrative slowly reveals the various untruths, injustices and betrayals that have shaped Naveen and those around him.

It often feels like a stage play with most scenes consisting of interactions between two or three characters, delivered with great skill by the talented cast that also includes Navin Chowdhry as Naveen’s feckless brother Harvinder and Shaheen Khan as Sangeeta’s mother Priya.