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The Affair - feat. McNulty, Pacey, Lisa Miller, and Alice Morgan - Sunday on Showtime

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Cornballer

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The Affair starts up Sunday, October 12th on Showtime. One of the best reviewed new shows of the Fall, The Affair presents an intimate look at an extramarital affair and the subsequent impact on the families involved. It starts Dominic West, Ruth Wilson, Joshua Jackson, and Maura Tierney. The first season will consist of 10 episodes.

The pilot is up now on youtube and a number of other places. See below for details.
Showtime said:
At once deeply observed and intriguingly elusive, THE AFFAIR explores the emotional effects of an extramarital relationship. Noah is a New York City schoolteacher and novelist who is happily married, but resents his dependence on his wealthy father-in-law. Alison is a young waitress trying to piece her life and marriage back together in the wake of a tragedy. The provocative drama unfolds when Alison and Noah meet in Montauk at the end of Long Island.

Award-winning playwright and writer/producer Sarah Treem (House of Cards, In Treatment) wrote the original script from a story created with Hagai Levi. They first worked together on the American adaption of Levi’s show In Treatment. Treem and Levi will both serve as executive producers, along with executive producer and director Jeffrey Reiner (Friday Night Lights) and executive producer Eric Overmyer.
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The pilot is up now on youtube and just about everywhere else:
In advance of Sunday’s premiere, Showtime is giving viewers an opportunity to sample its new drama series The Affair, about the effects of an extramarital affair, told separately from both the male and female perspectives. Starting today, viewers can sample the TV-14 rated version of pilot for free on YouTube (http://s.sho.com/theaffair), SHO.com, via a number of television providers’ free On Demand channels and websites, and on Showtime On Demand. The premiere episode will also be available via Showtime Anytime on any computer, iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, Kindle Fire, Fire Phone, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox 360 and Apple TV streaming players anywhere in the U.S., on the Showtime Preview app on Smart TVs from Samsung, LG and Panasonic, as well as for download as a free video podcast on iTunes.
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As the pilot is now up Showtime's youtube channel and a number of other legitimate places, please feel free to discuss the pilot as soon as you watch it.

Videos:
Links:
Early reviews:
Boston Globe said:
This intelligent, well-cast drama isn’t just about cheating; it’s about subjectivity, and how we each see the facts in our own way. The acting is extraordinary, with the mesmerizing, cat-like Wilson — so creepily good on 'Luther' — stealing the show.
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Washington Post said:
The pilot (the only episode made available to critics at press time) has some difficult scenes, yet the acting is strong and the story is compulsively intriguing. The first thing you want from The Affair is to see where it leads. Grade: B+
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Poniewozik said:
THE AFFAIR pilot was easily my favorite drama pilot of the Fall.
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Sepinwall said:
At least in the first episode, Treem has crafted a layered, thoughtful portrait of two marriages in different stages of strain (one from ennui, one from tragedy), and the very different ways that her cheating man (Dominic West) and woman (Ruth Wilson) come to view one another. Throw in fine supporting performances by Maura Tierney and Joshua Jackson as the cuckolded spouses and an intriguing narrative structure, and you have a show I'm looking forward to a lot more than its Sunday night companion on Showtime.
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Poster:
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I really wanted the kid to have killed himself. They are by far the worst part of the show, but I've only watched like the first 15 minutes so far
 
Thanks for the thread Cornballer!

I generally dislike affair storylines, so I'm not too thrilled about there being an entire show based around one, and the trailer didn't look very good to me, especially since there seems to be some sort of crime/detective angle, but reviews have been very positive so far so I'll still check it out.
 
Vox capsule review from their Fall tv preview:
This new Showtime drama does things with TV storytelling I've never seen done quite this well before. To say more than that would be to spoil what makes it so special, but I like the way that this starts in a fairly typical place — unhappy marriages, beautiful and affluent white people, a seemingly never-ending beach holiday — and gradually reels off its axis. Plus, it has a wonderful command of tone, perfectly blending wickedly dark humor into its mix without losing its central seriousness. There's a cast full of ringers — including Dominic West, Maura Tierney, and Josh Jackson — but the show's success stems from two women in particular: actress Ruth Wilson, who turns her character into a walking wound, and writer Sarah Treem, a playwright who co-created with In Treatment creator Hagai Levi and perfectly balances the show's many elements.
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Thread title's similar to this text I got: "Did you know McNutty and Alice are in a new Showtime show together?!?!"

DVR set to season pass.
 
Cornballer said:
Well, this is up for streaming from Showtime just about everywhere, so you can watch the pilot right now if you want.
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*strokes imaginary beard* Hmmm..I saw it was up there on Youtube from the OP, but I do like the advance screening stuff. Having the Chromecast seals it though. I'll watch it tonight before Gotham.

Danke Cornballer!
 
That was excellent. Love the approach they're taking in relation to the differing perspectives. The entire cast is great but in particular I'd say Ruth Wilson could be serious contender come award season.
 
I loved it. The way they told the story was really engaging for me.
I wanted to slap the older son from the moment he first appeared and then I wanted to beat the living shit out of him for what he did.
 
Watched the pilot and its another show this year that seems to be made especially for my taste. The cast is great and really interesting. (And loved that The Wire reunion). The one fatal flaw of this show might be that someone, anyone, cheats on Maura Tierney. Can't comprehend. (The complete disregard of real characters with motivations and such is absolutely intentional.) ;-)

Didn't know beforehand about the memory-twist, but it was well executed in the pilot. I'm skeptic how this will translate during the shows run, because it doesn't sound that appealing to witness large portion of the story twice, little difference or not, but I'm pretty confident, they will manage to avoid such problems. Or so I hope. I'm curious how the detective stuff is incorporated, right know I would be ok without it - just a story about characters dealing with live, but as I said, too early to judge on thos kind of things.

Potentially another new show this year, that is a homerun right in its first season. I also love that there are more shows like The Leftovers, Rectify and maybe now The Affair. Beautiful shot and scored, thoughtful (both in terms of themes & pace/general tone), depicting the life of "normal" people. Series pass is booked, no doubt.
 
Pilot was great. I knew nothing about it besides the cast and that there presumably was some cheating involved and the pilot left me very, very interested in the full series. I liked
the split between viewpoints and changes between shared scenes, wasn't expecting something like that.
 
Karu said:
Watched the pilot and its another show this year that seems to be made especially for my taste. The cast is great and really interesting. (And loved that The Wire reunion).
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I liked the 2 different viewpoints and will be checking out the next episode. I don't think it was great or anything though.
 
also 15 minutes in, very pleased to have made the correct call in what to watch.

edit: cinematography reminds me of True Detective for some reason. It's different obviously, but equally powerful.
(it's no surprise though, considering the show has a similar setup)

finished. It's impressive how the viewer is first invited
to enjoy being a voyeur when Noah is the viewpoint character and then turn right the fuck on its head when allison tells the story, including creepy watcher (kinda figured there was something wrong with that anyway, but not like that).
.
 
they certainly are spending a lot of money on marketing

i take the bus to and from work, and at least 1/4 of the buses i see have that poster with west and wilson on the side
 
Hmmm i don't know what to think yet. I liked West's part of the episode something about Wilson's part was off. There were a couple of bad written scenes, but overall writing is ok.
I think it was pretty good, but not a homerun. Not sure about that detective angle, espesially with preview telling us what it's about.
 
- Variety review:
The pairing of Dominic West and Ruth Wilson alone would be enough reason for enthusiasm about “The Affair,” a Showtime series that wraps infidelity in a mystery, then spoons out what happened in “Rashomon”-like dueling narratives. Launched behind “Homeland,” this is the kind of conceptually low-key series with which pay cable sometimes struggles to distinguish itself, but meticulously crafted and cleverly introduced, it’s likely to hook a discriminating audience, as well as launch Wilson, in particular, to another level in the U.S. after smaller theatrical roles and arresting TV work in her native U.K.
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- Poniewozik's review:
The Affair may become absorbing as a detective story. It may be titillating as an adultery story. But its theme is already compelling: The more you know about people, the more complicated their truth becomes. And sometimes the more you know about people, the less you find that you actually know them.
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- Sepinwall's review:
I've always found infidelity as a subject much less interesting than Hollywood has. When I heard about this show, I was cold to it, even with these actors involved, even with Treem running things. But the first episode, at least, is terrific, with a distinct, involving tone, and it does very right by its leads. I'll check back in after I've seen some more episodes, but this is a fine start to what promises to be a very messy story.
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- Onion A|V Club review:
If it continues as it began, The Affair is poised to be truly amazing television: a breathless and enthralling story about the mutability of the past, the little cruelties of fickle memory, the larger cruelties of trying to determine truth, and the stories we tell about ourselves because we must.
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- Andy Greenwald on The Affair:
The clever twist hidden inside each episode of The Affair is that the same story will be told from two distinct perspectives. This could be tiresome — and may yet prove to be — but Treem is a smart and subtle writer. She realizes that the uniqueness of our points of view isn’t limited to how we see the world around us — it’s fundamental to the way we see ourselves.
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- Matt Zoller Seitz's review for NY Mag:
But series creators Sarah Treem and Hagai Levi (masterminds of the great and terminally underrated In Treatment) treat the noirish aspects as a means to an end. This show is less interested in procedural details than in examining the ways in which couples and their children grow over time, and then grow apart — and even more so the tendency of first-person experience to distort our recollection of facts.
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Went in blind.

Didn't like the episode up until the introduction of the dual parallel storyline viewpoints.

Will watch going forward. Seems interesting.
 
I've been waiting for this show. I didn't realize the pilot was out so I'm going to watch now.

EDIT: Finished watching the pilot. I love the two different viewpoints.
Both had the same core points but you don't know which one is closest to the truth.

I'll watch the unedited version on Sunday.
 
In the beginning, I was thinking it was basically going to be "Unlikable Rich White People: The Show". The setup reminded me a whole lot of The Squid and the Whale, with upper class, annoyingly literary adults and their horrible (read: fucking awful older two) children throwing tantrums and acting like general shitheads, but the scene at the diner and then at the grandpa's house helped to humanize them a bit (the adults - the two older kids are still horrible). I was enjoying it, I suppose, but I wasn't crazy about it.

And then the "twist" happens and you get to see the everything start over again but from a different perspective, which I thought was interesting, but then the whole thing just clicked when the little girl was choking on the toy but it happens in a totally different way than how you originally saw it. At first I was like..."Wait, that's a mistake. The actors were in different positions a few scenes ago and the dialogue was different as well. I wonder how that got past the continuity superviso-Oohhh! Holy shit."

I thought they handled the dual perspectives extremely well - it gives the show a genuinely unique flavor and I just found it to be a thoroughly compelling device. It could get old seeing every scene between Noah and Alison twice, different as though they may be, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt after such a strong pilot.

Fuzzy said:
I wanted to slap the older son from the moment he first appeared and then I wanted to beat the living shit out of him for what he did.
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Same. I wouldn't be surprised if the mystery is that Noah and Alison killed his oldest daughter and son lol

Karu said:
I'm curious how the detective stuff is incorporated, right know I would be ok without it - just a story about characters dealing with live, but as I said, too early to judge on thos kind of things.
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Me too. I still don't quite know how to feel about it. It really could go either way at this point. I'm hoping that they don't try to stretch out the mystery across multiple seasons.

It also reminds me a lot of True Detective.
 
Just watched the uncensored version.

I'd say I liked it, with reservations about how it can maintain this interest across many episodes if not seasons.

The Rashomon structure seems like it will work best by minimizing the interaction between Noah and Alison, but I wonder if the show can dedicate itself to that. Rewatching too many of the same sequences with various differences might prove boring, but putting them together is hard to resist. Similarly, it's perhaps most interesting to the average viewer when the changes between memories are fairly significant rather than smaller things like tone, body language, little comments, etc., but I can also see that strain credulity and become frustrating. How flawed can their memories be? With these larger divides in stories, it would make sense to learn that they're consciously or subconsciously lying to themselves and/or the detectives, but I'm not sure I sense the show wanting to give that insight any time soon. So far, it feels like the admittedly minimal conversation we hear between them and the detectives accurately reflects what we see in their visual recountings, so it wouldn't work the way True Detective allowed viewers to see the disparities in the flashbacks and how they described things to the detectives. We don't appear to be getting clued into any additional games being played, but the possibilities are easily foreseeable.

I think ultimately, I wonder if combining two unreliable narrators plus a criminal scenario that introduces further motivations for adjusting memories may be one wrinkle too many. I need to see more to get a better grasp on how this plays out, because I can imagine scenarios where I start wondering if the memories we're witnessing are so unmoored from the truth that I shouldn't even be invested in it.
 
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