One of Us Is Lying by Peacock is a little bit Breakfast Club, a little bit Gossip Girl, a little bit Pretty Little Liars, and a whole lot aware that it’s building on tropes and stereotypes that came before it — characters frequently reference other shows, movies, and genres, including horror and true crime. But recognising the clichés it trades on isn’t the same as transcending them, and the upshot of all this mingling is a teen murder mystery series that’s regularly watchable but never quite terrific.
Based on Karen McManus’s novel, the drama opens on the first day of school with a compelling post on About THAT — a site that spills all the school’s deepest secrets and is operated by misanthropic misfit Simon (Mark McKenna) — promising forthcoming disclosures on four unidentified pupils. On the other hand, Simon ends himself in custody before he can deliver. And before his imprisonment is complete, he’s dead of an allergic reaction in what seems to be a murder, according to the authorities.
Suspicion rapidly falls on the four students who were with him when he died, each of whom holds a secret that can potentially destroy their future. Each of them had cause to worry their secrets might be revealed in Simon’s next message. Bronwyn (Marianly Tejada), the straight-A student who may not be as pure as she appears; Cooper (Chibuikem Uche), the star baseball player who is still in the closet; Addy (Annalisa Cochrane), the cheerleader who is cheating on her long-term boyfriend; and Nate (Cooper van Grootel), the small-time drug dealer whose next offence could land him in prison.
Despite the splashy drama implied by the concept, One of Us Is Lying’s hidden weapon is more understated.
Daro Madrona (Elite) has a firm command on the pacing of the murder mystery, doling out twists and clues at a steady enough speed to prevent a viewer’s attention from wandering too far — yet slowly enough that each new revelation has time to sink in.
The greatest bombshells (typically in the form of a new About THAT post from whoever anonymous weirdo has taken over the account after Simon’s death) are used sparingly. They tend to jumble the playing field just as we or the characters are about to become too comfortable.
Meanwhile, the many individuals’ ever-shifting friendships, feuds, and romances rely on the adolescent drama truism that no one in high school is precisely the social caricature they appear to be. Unsurprisingly, Simon’s death forces the four survivors together, and predictably, they learn to understand one another much better than their friends and family do.
The show’s most emotional sequences frequently feature these cross-clique connections, such as Addy taunting Nate about his obvious puppy-dog infatuation with Bronwyn or Cooper warming up to Nate after discovering their home circumstances aren’t as unlike as they’d imagined.
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What One of Us Is Lying lacks is a unique spark that distinguishes it from the slew of other murder mysteries and teen dramas out there — some subversion or deepening of the clichés it trades in, some rough edges to break up all its smooth skill. Simon complains in the first episode that Bayview High is a pure cliche: “It’s like everyone’s come to audition for the reboot of a John Hughes movie.” The series has failed to escape that vibe after the first three episodes were delivered to critics (out of a total of eight). The characters remain stereotypes rather than actual, breathing beings.
The programme is nearly always tuned at a sour, dour tone, with few moments of lightness or real sorrow. (One unexpectedly endearing exception is Nate’s talks with his pet iguana.) Please give us more of it.) The colours are lovely yet subdued as if they’ve passed through an especially harsh Instagram filter, and the performances are similarly controlled. These visual choices lend One of Us Is Lying and artificiality that, to be fair, feels appropriate for a programme about individuals urgently attempting to suppress ugly facts about themselves. However, they also hold the show’s emotions at bay.
This deficiency is not impossible. With everything going for it, One of Us Is Lying falls nicely into the genre of streaming series you might watch over the weekend without even realising it. The plot glides along at a leisurely pace, and the characters are easy to like if not quite engaging enough to adore.
But, lacking any remarkable idiosyncrasies or profound insights (or, frankly, even a single character who’s fun to dislike or thrilling to crush on), it’s also a programme that appears to be destined to fade from memory as soon as the binge is done. Perhaps Nate, Cooper, Bronwyn, and Addy have hidden depths. But the surface of the programme they’re on is all smooth and glossy.
The stunning story twists or the savagery of About That, the gossip site at its core, did not make the young adult novel One of Us Is Lying work. The distinctness and realism of the characters, which grew beyond the Breakfast Club-like collection collected in detention one fateful day when the inventor of that gossip site, Simon, dies, made Karen M. McManus’s bestseller novel work.
