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Liar (TV series)

television series

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ30612481 ↗
Source-derived summary

Liar is a British thriller television series created by Harry and Jack Williams, and co-produced by ITV and SundanceTV. The series stars Joanne Froggatt and Ioan Gruffudd as two people whose initial attraction leads to far-reaching consequences for them and their friends and families. The series premiered on ITV on 11 September 2017, with the first series concluding on 16 October 2017. The programme was renewed for a second and final series, which premiered on 2 March 2020, concluding on 6 April 2020.

Plot

Laura Nielson, a smart and capable teacher in the middle of a breakup, is set up on a date with widowed surgeon Andrew Earlham. However, the morning after, Laura realises she has been raped. When reporting the rape to the police proves fruitless, Laura investigates the incident herself.

Cast and characters

Main

Joanne Froggatt as Laura Nielson, a smart and dedicated teacher who is newly single

Ioan Gruffudd as Andrew Earlham, a renowned surgeon whose son, Luke, is a pupil in Laura's class

Zoë Tapper as Katy Sutcliffe, Laura's older sister, a surgical nurse who works with Andrew at the local hospital

Richie Campbell as Liam Sutcliffe, Katy's husband and father of her two children

Jamie Flatters as Luke Earlham, Andrew's son who is a pupil in Laura's class

Shelley Conn as DI Vanessa Harmon, a detective with the fictional Thanet and Dover Police who investigates Laura's allegation of rape

Danny Webb as DS Rory Maxwell, a Thanet & Dover Police detective and second in command to Vanessa Harmon

Kieran Bew as Ian Davis, Laura's new love interest

Recurring

Warren Brown as PC Tom Bailey (Series 1), Laura's ex-boyfriend who is having an affair with her sister, Katy

Eileen Davies as Andrew Earlham's elderly friend Sylvia (Series 1)

Jill Halfpenny as Jennifer Robertson, Vanessa's wife, a soldier

Dawn Steele as Catherine McAulay (Series 1), an Edinburgh barmaid and friend of Andrew Earlham

Katherine Kelly as DI Karen Renton (Series 2), an officer from the Metropolitan Police

Sam Spruell as Oliver Graham (Series 2), an old acquaintance of Andrew Earlham

Amy Nuttall as Winnie Peterson (Series 2), a nurse

Howard Charles as Carl Peterson (Series 2), Winnie's husband who owns a boatyard, an ex-soldier and Afghanistan veteran

Dermot Crowley as Henry Neilson (Series 2), the father of Laura Neilson and Katy Sutcliffe

Jack Colgrave Hirst, as Greg Maxwell (Series 2), son of DS Rory Maxwell, a National Crime Agency officer

Lucy Speed as a Counsellor (Series 2)

Michael Wildman as DI Michael McCoy (Series 2)

Jenny Galloway as the Marina Inn hotel receptionist (Series 2)

Production

Liar was announced on 15 April 2016 as the first full production from Two Brothers Pictures. On 30 September 2016, the miniseries was commissioned by American cable network SundanceTV and British commercial broadcaster ITV. Commercial broadcasters TF1 and Seven have also ordered the series. Filming for the series began in London and Kent in November 2016. The marshes were filmed in Tollesbury, Essex.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Liar (TV series)” is television series. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Liar, series and television, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2017, 2020, 2016—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Liar, series and television is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “television series” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q30612481. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2017, 2020 and 2016.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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  • Tracing reception history
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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Liar (TV series)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Liar (TV series) primary sources, Liar (TV series) archive and Liar research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Liar (TV series)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.