The Affair: Season Four

This Showtime original series about the reverberations of an affair through the lives of two couples and their families continues to explore the emotional fallout—as well as the lingering emotional ties—years after the titular inciting incident. Novelist Noah (Dominic West) is now divorced from Alison (Ruth Wilson) and has moved to Los Angeles to be near his children from his first marriage to Helen (Maura Tierney), the latter now remarried to a successful surgeon (Omar Metwally). Cole (Joshua Jackson), Alison's first husband, is married to Luisa (Catalina Sandino Moreno), an undocumented immigrant living in fear of being discovered, but he still worries about Alison, who has a history of depression and impulsive actions. When Alison goes missing in the final episodes of the season, Cole teams up with Noah to find her. Sanaa Lathan joins the cast this season as the principal of the charter school where Noah teaches English literature and Christopher Meyer plays her son Anton, a gifted writer who Noah encourages. Each episode is presented in a split narrative—one half from the perspective of each of the two major characters, often with contradictory portrayals of the same events, and that aesthetic builds to a shocking extreme in the penultimate episode of the season. The Affair continues to be an intelligent and engaging drama about complicated emotions and contradictory human nature. Presenting all 10 episodes from the 2018 fourth season, extras include a behind-the-scenes featurette and character profiles. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)