One of us is Lying (2022), the newest teen crime drama series to hit Netflix. Speaking as someone who has not read the original novels that inspired this series, I went in completely blind with zero knowledge of the characters or the plot. This show is a combination of new and old teen cinema, references/influences span from The Breakfast Club to 13 Reasons Why, the series felt very lost in itself, it was trying to reference too much without having a cohesive style on its own. The story sees a group of five students in detention but one of them dies, it is up to the remaining four to retrace their steps and solve how this suspected murder took place right under their noses. The characters are fully formed and some more likeable than others, I found the character of Simon (sadly the one who dies) to be the most intriguing, I felt like I truly wanted to know what happened to him.
The character journeys aren’t very surprising, each of the four characters follow a very mediocre, predictable character arc, none of them have a truly captivating or compelling backstory and sadly none of them are interesting enough for us to be bothered whether they did it or not. I found myself drifting from the story, I had my suspicions of several characters but all my theories were debunked far too quickly, which meant I was left with the reveal being obvious by the last few episodes.
The set up and the location choice of detention was a nice nod to The Breakfast Club, I appreciated this reference and enjoyed the small Easter eggs to 80s teen movies.
All the cast did a good job, none of them were particularly better than the rest. Simon, played by Mark McKenna was a stand out for me, he played with character with enough traits to like yet hate him.
Setting up for a season two, I will definitely watch a second season. I hope they’ve found their footing after this season and in the next the character would be more developed and the storyline could be more intense.
Inevitably we will see a season two, this is Netflix after all… sadly this potentially means Simon will not be making an appearance (as he is dead), so the best character will be absent which may make the future season a little difficult to watch, personally.
The stakes were too soft, the reason for the ‘murder’ was a little far fetched. There wasn’t enough at stake for me to believe the story or believe the killer could be capable of that.
|spoiler ahead| the character that committed the murder didn’t have a character arc at all, he simply remained the same throughout, which made his reveal very unexpected but almost ridiculous. Jake’s character was barely in the series until the end and we had no time to truly suspect him.
Overall, this new Netflix series isn’t the best I’ve seen recently. I wouldn’t highly recommend this series because it doesn’t grip you, the narrative isn’t strong enough for it to become a new favourite of mine. The character are a little dull and some of them are a little too annoying. The final reveal was built up to ultimately be disappointing and unsatisfactory, there was zero justice but also not enough of a reaction from the characters, the ending fell flat. I expected a lot more from this series, after watching the trailer/sneak peak I was intrigued and excited but unfortunately they seemed to use all the best moments in the teaser… I very underwhelming show with little personality.
I did enjoy the watch and I needed to know what happened in the end but it wasn’t original, this series didn’t show us anything new we haven’t seen before, character and plot. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you are a particularly big fan of mediocre crime drama… which unfortunately I thought I was.
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