It is one of the most perplexing, sometimes acclaimed and sometimes loathed dramas on TV. That's The Affair (Sunday, TMN/Movie Central, 10 p.m. and on demand).
Should you watch it? There are no easy answers. None. In its first season, it was a Golden Globe winner. But, you know, that doesn't mean it's for you.
The Affair first told the sometimes engrossing story of a raging extramarital affair between Noah (Dominic West) and Alison (Ruth Wilson) and did so by changing the storytelling perspectives between the two lovers.
Me, I liked it much, at first. It was adults-only, sexually charged, about very troubled people. Created by the team behind HBO's In Treatment, the sophisticated storytelling made it extra compelling. Noah, married to his college sweetheart, Helen (Maura Tierney), with whom he has four children, met Alison, a waitress whose marriage to the mercurial Cole (Joshua Jackson) was undermined by the death of a child. What was seemingly torrid became sinister, as raw but dormant emotions were unleashed.
Then The Affair began to wobble, as we saw events from two points of view but the characters became less compelling. Alison, in particular, seemed to fade into a caricature, a nitwit narcissist. Noah seemed less real as a struggling writer when it became clear the affair with Alison was the basis for his big breakthrough book.
This season (you can catch up with it on demand and on Crave TV), the points of view also include those of their exes, Helen and Cole, as the show sinks its dramatic teeth into the collateral damage from two breakups. And then there's a murder that Noah is alleged to have committed: Did he really kill someone while driving at night in his car? Noah and Alison are living together and the focus is on what happens when two desperate people have achieved what they want, or think they want.
But the points of view from Helen and Cole cast doubt on what the two lovers accept as truth. The Affair would have us believe it is about truth and how one person's intimacy with events is not a reliable barometer. It pushes us, the viewers, to find a compass in order to get our bearings.
The multiple-POV technique is now at a maddening level. The show aims to frustrate as much as it satisfies. Helen and Cole are, in essence, depressed. Both are stumbling through the post-breakup period. The flashes of anger that emanate from them throw light on the marriages that were destroyed. This fills out The Affair as an ongoing drama and makes it more palatable. And yet, if you are in need of an emotional payoff from the reverberations of a passionate extramarital affair, you are not likely to get it soon. The Affair is perplexing because it is one very long tease.
Now, I do have this theory about the series: The narrative is actually one long nightmare. A murky, repetitive dream sequence in which nothing that happens is reliable. All is distorted. It is Noah's nightmare; all the fears of where his lust and ego might lead are being projected into a horrific, twisted hallucination.
That's why there is a disturbing sense of menace added to what should be mundane conversations. As when Alison talks to Noah's lawyer and the lawyer says, with a very particular tone of caution: "I am sure this will work out exactly as it should."
The thing is, The Affair compels us to make sense of its twisted, multiple narratives. It unnerves us. It isn't satisfying. It is ceaselessly irritating. It's very good and then it isn't. It is someone else's nightmare we don't want to share but are compelled to look at. Good luck with it.
Also airing this weekend
The third episode of Keeping Canada Alive (Sunday, CBC, 9 p.m.) continues the series' fascinating chronicle of 24 hours in the life of the country's health-care system. This episode shows us an unconventional palliative-care doctor in Vancouver who helps a terminal cancer patient make a formidably difficult decision. And in St. Catharines, Ont., a teenager in the process of transitioning from male to female brings her mother to a checkup with her doctor. A Montreal man with a recurring brain tumour has surgery for the fourth time, this time with the aid of new technology. In Yellowknife, an emergency-room doctor treats a man with disturbing symptoms who has been flown in from a remote community. All of life and death and worry and rapture are here.