Series / True Lies (2023)

Harry: I'm Harry Tasker, husband, dad, computer salesman. And for 17 years the most important person in my life didn't know I was also something else: Omega Sector's top spy.
Helen: I'm Helen Tasker, wife, mom and professor. After an unfortunate incident where I found out our whole life was a lie, now I'm also a spy.
Harry: Honey, all those things are true. They're just, you know...
Helen: What?
Harry: True Lies.

True Lies is a 2023 action series developed by Matt Nix (Burn Notice, The Gifted) based on the 1994 film of the same name written and directed by James Cameron. Cameron, Nix, and McG executive produce.

The series follows a suburban housewife (Ginger Gonzaga) who discovers her husband (Steve Howey) is secretly an international super spy, and begins to join him on his missions. The series premiered on CBS March 1, 2023.

Two months later, on May 8, it was announced that the show had been cancelled after one season.

Previews: Trailer

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True Lies contains examples of the following:

• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Helen teases her teenage kids by acting like she'll show people photos with them and a teen they know as little children bathing in a tub together.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Helen feels bored with her suburban life and openly wanting more excitement. She sure got it...
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Gib only calls his father "Al" starting out in "Independent Dependents" as a mark of their poor relationship, which he started doing in middle school. By the end, they've patched things up and he calls him "Dad" again.
• Covert Group with Mundane Front:
  • Harry appears to work for Telynox Solutions, a run-of-the-mill computer company that's a front for Omega Sector. Banter between Harry and a desk assistant indicates that the front office staff honestly believe they're working for a computer company and have no idea this is a government spy agency.
  • "Working Vacation" confirms most of the office staff is unaware the annual company retreat in Mexico is a cover for Omega Sector brass meeting. Thus, when the resort is attacked, Maria has to keep employees safe and unaware of what's happening.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
  • Harry claims that the old woman from next door they left watching their kids is actually a trained assassin. The same woman is shown calmly talking to their kids showing them pictures of cats. When called on though, she pulls a gun and leaps into readiness.
  • At first, no one can believe "The Wolf," a notorious contract killer, comes off as a nerdy guy geeking out over everyone. Then he gets in the field and transforms into a stone-cold assassin whose ruthlessness horrifies even veteran agents.
• Deadly Gas: "Independent Dependents" has an arms manufacturing company's headquarters seized by some armed men, with it being revealed they had made nerve gas with the attackers planning to sell this on the black market. It's tested on one unfortunate hostage, who dies very quickly.
• Dressing as the Enemy: Amazingly, it's Helen who comes up with the idea of having Harry dress like one of the downed thugs in the pilot to walk her out and help them escape.
• Got Volunteered: Omega Sector boss Susan Trilby makes it clear to Helen there is no such thing as someone only "knowing" about Omega Sector, they have to be a full agent. Before she knows it, Helen is being trained to join Harry on his missions.
• Hidden Depths: A key reason Helen is recruited to Omega Sector is how her skills come in handy. As a language teacher who's multilingual, she can understand one terrorist complaining his leg is injured, giving Harry an opening to take him down. Also, her yoga training surprisingly works well for handling herself in a fight.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Harry (Steve Howey, 6'4) is much taller than Helen (Ginger Gonzaga, 5'5) which is very noticeable whenever they kiss, stand right by each other etc.
• Implausible Deniability: When Harry fights off guys in a restaurant, he claims he's just going off tae kwon do classes he took and barely knows how to handle a gun. He also tries to keep up the cover of a computer salesman to guys who know all about Omega Sector.
• Internal Reveal: The final episodes have Dana and Jake discovering the truth of their parents' spy lives.
• Let's You and Him Fight: In Episode 4, the team realizes the assassination of a Serbian official is the work of some arms dealers who want to start a war in the Balkans and sell to both sides.
• Living a Double Life: As in the original film, Harry has been keeping his spy career a secret from his family.
• Mistaken for Cheating: The pilot has Helen becoming convinced Harry is having an affair thanks to always being away and that parts of his stories on his "business trips" don't add up. When confronted, Harry is forced to claim he's been planning a surprise trip to Paris to invite Helen along, which ends up revealing his spy life.
• Moral Sociopathy: The Wolf is an assassin who doesn't feel empathy or remorse when he kills people. But he only kills people that Omega Sector determines are global threats.
  The Wolf: It's like being an accountant. You don't just pick random people off the streets and do their taxes.
• Professional Killer: The Wolf is an assassin whom Omega Sector has hired to do wet work in the past, but also consult on preventing assassinations by him thinking about how he would do this, uncovering the plans this way.
• Race Lift:
  • Helen in the series is played by biracial (Dutch/Filipina) actress Ginger Gonzaga. Of course her kids with Harry are also thus mixed, and look far more like her.
  • Gib originally was white; he's black here.
• Remake Cameo: As seen in one of the commercials, Tom Arnold (who played Gib in the original film) appears in the series.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • Among Helen's peeves about Harry lying to her all these years on being a spy is that he's been going around the world to exotic locales while she's been stuck at home all the time.
  • When Harry says he can fly a helicopter, Helen complains how his claims of being "airsick" previously kept them from seeing a volcano in Hawaii.
  • Helen won't accept Harry saving the President's life in Argentina as a valid excuse for missing their anniversary.
  Helen: Harry, if we live through this, you're sleeping on the couch.
  Harry: Yeah, I figured.
• The Sociopath: Nathan, a hitman called "The Wolf", tells Helen he doesn't feel emotions like happiness and has never considered whether he liked his work. He's very skilled at acting normal though, with Helen thinking he's good at heart and he acts quite friendly with other people.
• Spotting the Thread: The team find e-mails pointing them to a chemical plant used by arms dealers. But Helen's language skills let her see that while the e-mails are in English, their sentence structure indicates they were in German first and translated. The team thus realizes this is all a trap and able to turn the tables on the terrorists.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: When held captive, Harry admits being a spy but that Helen is his supervisor as "what idiot brings a useless college teacher on a mission?" Assuming this is some odd bluff, Helen goes with it only to realize Harry actually is a spy.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: The Wolf is a notorious hitman who is described as horrifying. It turns out he looks like just a nerdy, friendly man who's quite average, though his darker side does show to Harry. He tells Helen that his first name is also Nathan.
• Thought They Knew Already: The team is surprised when a low-level tech reveals that Gib's father knows all about Omega Sector and founded an arms company, as the woman relates she just figured they knew all about their teammate.
• True Love Is Boring: Helen admits that while she does love Harry, she can find him somewhat boring. This is before the reveal that he’s a spy, of course.
• Working with the Ex: Maria and Luther are dating in the first season before they break up, but continue working on the same team. After this he dates Quinn, who's in Omega Sector too, as a tech. This makes things awkward at first for them, not surprisingly.

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