True Lies Review: TV Adaptation of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Film Is in Too Much of a Hurry to Be a CBS Show

Did we need a television adaptation of the 1994 film True Lies? No, but the bones of a decent television are there. Spies! Deception! A hot couple at the center! Unfortunately, CBS's version of the film, out this Wednesday, couldn't wait to fall in line with the rest of CBS's lineup, eschewing the charm of the film in favor of a weekly procedural with a familiar title. This take on James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jamie Lee Curtis' entertaining action-comedy feeds the basic premise of the film — a husband comes clean to his bored wife about his secret life as a spy, and the spark in their marriage is relit when she joins him on missions — into the CBS-ifier, filtering out the parts that made the movie enjoyable and adding what a network executive thinks will sustain a broadcast series. 

True Lies, created by Burn Notice's Matt Nix, barrels through what the film brilliantly set up in order to get to what the show will presumably be over however long it lasts, bringing up the question of why someone thought turning True Lies into a TV show was a good idea in the first place. 

In the film, Schwarzennegger's Harry Tasker is a spy for the top-secret counterterrorism agency Omega Sector, and after missing his own birthday party, which his wife Helen (Curtis) planned for him because he was on a mission, he overhears Helen making plans to meet up with another man (Bill Paxton in one of his greatest roles), who offers Helen an adventurous outlet by pretending to be a spy. After learning that Helen is bored with her life with Harry, Harry sets up a fake undercover mission for her, leading to the infamous scene of Curtis pole-dancing around a bed as she thinks she's saving the world as a covert ops agent, none the wiser that her husband is behind the whole thing. Their truths come out, and after some James Cameron action, Helen joins Harry as a spy.

In the show, Harry (Steve Howey) is still a spy for Omega Sector, and after a friend suggests to Helen (Ginger Gonzaga) that Harry's habit of sneaking around to take private work calls and coming home a day late from out-of-town sales conferences might be the bad behavior of a cheatin' dog, Harry has to smooth things over by telling Helen he's been acting funny because he was planning a surprise trip to Paris for the two of them. So what does he do? He takes her to Paris... where he also happens to have a big mission to stop a deadly weapon from falling into the wrong hands! It's not long before his mission interferes with their "vacation," Helen learns the truth, and she's roped into helping Omega Sector with the mission to save the day. 

4.2

True Lies

at CBS

Like

• Ginger Gonzaga is effervescent as Helen
• It never takes itself seriously

Dislike

• It's directionless with a questionable future
• Action scenes are a letdown
• Dialogue is bad

The film brilliantly subverted our expectations by giving Helen her own secrets that led to Harry inadvertently exposing his. The series makes Helen a simple rube who only dreams of more, blunting the excitement of partners keeping secrets from each other and finding out what they both needed only after those secrets are exposed. Even Rupert Holmes' "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" knew that two-way deception was the interesting part here; two lies that collide into each other are better than one that just sits there. 

But the real problem is how this can continue once the cat is out of the bag. Holmes wrapped up his song in just under four minutes, and Cameron's film lets Harry and Helen go on a spy mission together before rolling the credits after just over two hours (a planned sequel never happened). I've seen four episodes of True Lies, and Helen's cure for boredom by joining her husband as a spy just creates another level of boredom for the viewer that begins with Episode 2. Where does the show go from here, now that the lies are all out in the open, other than becoming another lighthearted romantic spy show on a broadcast network? (R.I.P. Whiskey Cavalier and Undercovers, both canceled before the end of their first seasons.)

Gonzaga, who showed she can play more than a part in an ensemble with a powerful role in Showtime's Kidding, has the vibrancy that can carry a simple series like that. Even though Helen is mostly a fish-out-of-water tag-along, Gonzaga is magnetic, and, assuming Helen took some sort of Tae Bo class, a pretty good fighter. But Harry's role is more of a problem, though it's not Howey's fault. The slyly funny thing about Harry in the film was that Schwarzenegger and all of his muscles were pretending to be a salesman. Howey, who possesses much more of a mortal's physique, has a harder time being a convincing spy, made even harder by the limp action sequences. 

Putting theses two versions of Helen and Harry together removes the contrast between the film's versions, which helped power the fun idea of Helen becoming a spy. In the show, there's more of a rush to get them to equal footing and turn this into Mr. & Mrs. Smith (an adaptation of which is also coming to TV later this year). But that film's dynamic has the built-in tension of the pair working for opposing agencies. CBS's True Lies feels like it's moving toward being an NCIS or an FBI, with the slight wrinkle that two agents are married to each other.

True Lies does have some other places it can go, but it's hard to tell how effective those directions will be. Helen and Harry's teenage son and daughter don't know what they're up to, so things could evolve into a CBS version of The Americans (god I hope not). Other members of Harry's team also have a romantic past, though that's a B-story at best. And a later episode showcases Omega Sector's training program, which is a promising "spy school as high school" premise, but also underlines the notion that True Lies isn't sure what to do with itself. 

That's evident in some details that supposedly prop the whole show up. There's an ongoing bit about the Taskers' broken dishwasher and how the family can't afford to repair it. See, Harry's dedication to his cover as a mildly successful computer salesman means that they have to live that life, and Omega Sector only pays him $62,000 a year, despite the fact that he's the top agent. That's a hard-and-fast rule! Yet Omega Sector also quickly welcomes in Helen as a field agent — she gets her own mission in Episode 2! — despite the fact that she's a civilian with no qualifications other than being a linguistics professor who does yoga. That's a silly rule! CBS's commitment to making True Lies such an easy-breezy, network-friendly series means that it will have to face some hard truths: The idea that we want everything adapted into a TV show is a lie.

Premieres: Wednesday, March 1 at 10/9c on CBS
Who's in it: Steve Howey, Ginger Gonzaga, Omar Miller, Erica Hernandez, Mike O'Gorman, Beverly D'Angelo
Who's behind it: Matt Nix (creator), McG and James Cameron (executive producers)
For fans of: Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Whiskey Cavalier
How many episodes we watched: 4