The Following Events Are Based on a Pack of Lies review — revenge thriller rich in cliffhangers

New BBC drama The Following Events Are Based on a Pack of Lies revolves around a con artist, but this fictional story of a man who preys on the lonely and vulnerable brings to mind the true-life tragedy dramatised in The Sixth Commandment last month. Viewed with Ben Field’s exploitation of two elderly people fresh in the memory, this series seems more contrived.

The show is an inconsistent mix of dark comedy, revenge thriller and emotive character drama. It follows careworn forty-something Alice (Rebekah Staton) who runs into her ex-husband Rob (Alistair Petrie) 15 years after he disappeared with all her money. To her shock, it turns out that he’s not only alive, but passing for an esteemed climate activist. 

Behind the polished eco-warrior facade he’s a noxious polluter of minds. With Alice unable to prove anything to the police, Rob begins his seduction of a new mark: the wealthy, widowed fantasy novelist Cheryl Harker (Marianne Jean-Baptiste). As flattery and forwardness turn into coercion and control, Alice desperately tries to gain Cheryl’s trust and to expose Rob as a fraudster. Her fear of being ridiculed leads her to also ironically assume a false identity, severing Cheryl further from the truth.

Committed performances and shrewdly executed cliffhangers save the overstretched plot, which often stifles its own momentum. The reflections on how victims of psychological abuse are conditioned to doubt themselves may be discordant with the show’s otherwise arch approach, but they are also affecting and empathetic.

Pack of Lies is worthy in places, but it’s not as watchable as you would hope. This may partly be down to Petrie’s commendably loathsome turn as Rob — at times he is so insufferable, you’re almost compelled to move on to something else. If only Cheryl would do the same.

★★★☆☆

On BBC1 and iPlayer on August 29 at 9pm. New episodes air weekly