Lie to Me stars Tim Roth as Dr. Cal Lightman, one of the world’s premiere experts on detecting lies. He runs his own company, and gives lectures to police forces, special agents, and a wide variety of other institutions. Of course, he also gets called in on the odd case, because that’s where we get our show.
Something of a mix between House and The Mentalist, Lie to Me is part investigation, part psychological instruction, and part playing up the “people suck” angle that is becoming increasingly popular. Cal is fully on board with the idea that everybody lies, but runs with that idea from a very different perspective than we might be used to, say from watching House. Where House sees omnipresent deceit as a sort of proof that people are all terrible, and it’s just a matter of figuring out in what way, Cal looks at the general idea more in terms of the theory that really we’re all telling a lie just by showing up in the first place.
Sure, some people are being dishonest about more important things than others. Some people are telling you a lie because telling the truth means confessing to a crime. That’s really neither here nor there for Cal. You lie just by presenting yourself as someone you know you aren’t. As Cal’s partner, Dr. Gillian Foster (Kelli Williams) tells us early on in the pilot, knowing that you’re telling a lie hardly means anything… it’s knowing why.