Ioan Gruffudd has made it clear over the last five years that he intends to make the small screen his home. His supernatural drama Forever sadly never attracted the audiences it needed to stay on the air, and it was cancelled by ABC in 2015 after only a single season. Now he's landed a new project, and this one sounds like it may be able to entice plenty of people to give it a try. The Welsh actor has signed on to star in the Sundance thriller Liar.
Liar will be a miniseries set to run for six episodes on the Sundance network. In it, Ioan Gruffudd will play a surgeon named Andrew Ellis who hits the dating scene and meets school teacher Laura Newell, played by English actress Joanne Froggatt, who has just ended a relationship and wants to give romance another try. Laura discovers that Andrew is the father to one of her students, and they spend a night together that sets off a series of events that will alter their lives forever. A chance meeting between two single people becomes a twisted dynamic of secrets and lies that neither of them expected.
Liar is being produced by Sundance in conjunction with the British network ITV, according to TVLine. Production will begin in London and Kent in the U.K. this November.
Both Ioan Gruffudd and Joanne Froggatt are coming off of memorable TV roles. Gruffudd joined the cast of Lifetime's UnReal for its second season as the billionaire John Booth, and Froggatt just finished up her long-running role as the maid Anna in the popular ITV series Downton Abbey. Andrew Ellis and Laura Newell sound like big departures from their most recent characters. It should be interesting to see them stretch their acting muscles for something as twisty as Liar.
The show is being produced by Harry and Jack Williams. The brothers collaborated to bring the six-part British comedy Fleabag for BBC and Amazon. Fleabag was quite well-received by critics. Only time will tell if the Williams brothers can do as well with six episodes of a thriller as they did with six episodes of a psychologically dark comedy.
Sundance isn't exactly the biggest network to give Ioan Gruffudd and Joanne Froggatt exposure in their biggest post-Forever and Downton Abbey roles. It started out as a premium movie channel, but recent years have seen the indie-leaning network move toward original TV series to attract more viewers. Hopefully Liar will go down as one of the best originals to come out of the network since it began producing scripted dramas.
Given that production is only starting in November, we shouldn't expect to see any footage out of Liar any time soon. Check out our fall TV premiere schedule to see what you'll be able to catch on the small screen in the very near future.
