Lie to Me: Season One

“Body language tells the truth” is the mantra of Dr. Cal Lightman (Tim Roth), the top deception expert in The Lightman Group, a firm offering human lie detectors for hire to corporate entities, private clients, and government agencies. Lightman and his fellow experts (partner Kelli Williams and junior agents Brendan Hines and Monica Raymund) spend each of the 13 episodes of this 2009 first season explaining every detail to one another in babblespeak of dubious legitimacy (“in a fake smile, there's no eye wrinkling”). Roth holds the screen as Lightman, an arrogant investigator grown cynical because he knows that everybody lies, and he isn't above using his talents on his own team members, which carries inevitable consequences. But otherwise Lie to Me is just the latest incarnation of the formula popularized by CSI and its knockoffs—criminal procedurals that focus on specialized talents depicted as the only tool to solve every case. While the underlying science is real (inspired in large part by the work of Dr. Paul Ekman and his study of micro-expressions), the characters leap to false conclusions based on the slightest evidence. DVD/Blu-ray extras include a “making-of” featurette and deleted scenes. Optional. (S. Axmaker)