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oday’s TV dramas require ever more complex story lines to attract and satisfy increasingly sophisticated audiences. Yet writers cannot make their thrillers too complicated, or confused audiences will switch off. This writing dilemma has been suc cessfully negotiated several times by Jack and Harry Williams. They have pulled off the delicate balancing act once again with the second series of the acclaimed ITV show Liar, which is co-produced by SundanceTV. The Williams brothers knew that the very title of their six-part project would suggest a convoluted plot that questioned which characters were lying and who was telling the truth. But the theme of constant lying can be both a blessing and a curse, accord ing to Jack Williams. “Our story is about people hiding secrets from themselves, their spouses, their family – and I think that worked well in the first series,” he said. “We definitely tried to do it again in the second series because, with people lying, you also have the expectation of them being found out. Of course, then other things happen.” Always at the back of their minds while writing is the need for clarity. “The story has to be clear to the viewer because we haven’t done our jobs prop erly if they don’t follow it,” said Harry Williams during the Q&A session fol lowing an exclusive RTS screening of the first episode of series 2. The brothers’ confidence in negoti ating the complexity issue is wellfounded because, not only had they already jumped that hurdle in series 1, but they were also similarly effective in another of their thrillers, The Missing. This drama developed dual timelines and multiple plots, a structure that creates puzzles which they both enjoy solving. “Our rule about structure is really just a case of how we tell the story in the best way,” explained Harry Williams. “If you can tell it in one time line, then fine, we would do that. We’re not attempting to be clever for the sake of it.” The first series of Liar centred on an allegation that surgeon Andrew Earl ham (played by Ioan Gruffudd) raped teacher Laura Nielson (Joanne
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Secrets and lies Screenwriters Jack and Harry Williams, the creators of ITV’s Liar, reveal the knack of keeping audiences hooked
Froggatt), but it was unclear who was telling the whole truth. The series ended with a shot of Earlham’s dead body lying prostrate in a marsh. The new series picks up from there. “We had to tell the Liar story in two timelines,” said Jack Williams, “because it’s important that you see what’s hap pening to Laura in the present day and also how it happened. Every time we go back in time and see what Andrew did, it’s a whole other level of intrigue.” Yet a second series – which took nine months to write – was not originally an automatic option. “We explored a lot of endings for series 1. But if we’d ended it with Andrew just going to prison, it would’ve been shit, so killing Andrew was the best way to end,” said Harry Williams. “In the writing process, it
takes ages to look at every version of an ending but, finally, you have to be led by the story and, for Liar, we needed more time to tell everything.” The first series became a talking point because it was broadcast as reports were emerging about allega tions of rape by Harvey Weinstein and his criminal treatment of women. The programme, its writers and star Joanne Froggatt were caught up in questions from the tabloid press and the Twitterati concerning whether it was legitimate to have a storyline based on a woman being raped. But Froggatt was always adamant that the series was not using sexual assault gratuitously. “No, that wasn’t the case at all,” she said. “When our first season aired, sex ual assault against women was a
