True Lies

Steve Howey and Ginger Gonzaga in the CBS series version of "True Lies." Alan Markfield/CBS. CNN —.

TV has a long track record of husband-and-wife spy and/or detective shows, which might explain why “True Lies” feels like a breezy throwback to a different era. To anyone familiar with the 1994 movie “True Lies,” the first question for a series adaptation is where to begin. Although he’s a little buff for a computer salesman, Helen complains that his “idea of fun and adventure is ordering coffee from Hawaii.”

CBS tries to recapture the glory of James Cameron's 1994 spy film "True Lies." There's no glory in the remake starring Steve Howey and Ginger Gonzaga.

But the thrills, romance and laughs from that series were easy and free-flowing, whereas everything about "Lies" is forced and awkward. Howey and Gonzaga are too cutesy and slapstick for the tone the series is trying to achieve, pushing "Lies" dangerously close to parody. But "Lies" is a slog to get through, hacky and hammy where its inspiration was genuinely funny and thrilling. "Avatar" himself, [James Cameron](https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2022/12/15/james-cameron-avatar-sequel-billion-dollar-box-office-bet/10892609002/)) and turns it into something as generic as a network spy procedural? His wife, Helen (Ginger Gonzaga, "She-Hulk"), is suspicious of his many work trips and worried about their marriage. Harry Tasker (Steve Howey, "Shameless") is a regular soccer dad by day and an operative for the government's top-secret espionage agency by night.

The director's 1994 film about a spy posing as a mild-mannered married man is cheapened with a junky small-screen transfer.

The difficulty with taking a $100m-budgeted action flick (True Lies was in fact the first movie ever to cost that much) and remaking it on a fraction of the cost is that we’re automatically forced into comparing and contrasting, the cheaper one inevitably not faring quite as well within a flashy genre such as this (one of the many reasons ABC’s Marvel shows were hard to stomach). (One could argue the film also led to Date Night, Knight and Day and a flurry of other genre-mixing crowd-pleasers.) At one point Cameron was set to take a larger role before retreating into the blue and handing over the baton to a team that promptly drops it, falls over and lands flat on their faces. Granted, it might only be the lightest of grazes with just a token executive producer credit but the finished product is so thoroughly junky that even the mildest of associations is the kind of embarrassment one would want scrubbed from both IMDb page and televisual history at large.

James Cameron's blockbuster 'True Lies' hits CBS with Steve Howey stepping in for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ginger Gonzaga for Jamie Lee Curtis.

CBS’ True Lies is much more in the vein of the network’s semi-recent reboots of things like Magnum, P.I. People talk about his expertise and excellence — it’s part of why he was “allowed” to have a civilian wife in the first place — but very little of it is on display in either the initial Helen-free mission or subsequent episodes. The use of foreign settings — so many Getty Images-style establishing shots of places like “Paris” and “Salzburg” — is meek. The team of directors, starting with Anthony Hemingway in the pilot, fail to mount anything memorable by way of a set piece, with a milquetoast helicopter stunt in the premiere rather amusingly standing is as a shadow of the Harrier-driven spectacle in the movie. I’m rooting for more screen time for Beverly D’Angelo, a very funny replacement for Charlton Heston as the Omega boss. There are at least some OK guest stars, including Matthew Lillard, who is so good in his appearance that if the show hits for CBS, I can safely guarantee he will either become a recurring piece of the ensemble or be given a spinoff. As a result, the chronically underused Gonzaga is the show’s most thoroughly appealing element. She has a clear skill set, albeit one for which the value of all those aforementioned recreational interests is a tiny bit silly, as well as an emotional investment in the life that she and Harry lived before. Helen, incidentally, is now a community college linguistics professor with an aptitude for languages, tae-bo and yoga, all of which will come in mighty handy when she learns the truth about Harry’s secret identity and VERY quickly becomes a part of his world of espionage and intrigue. But once the show folds her into the team, the overall familiarity of the material makes it hard to get invested. It’s hard to tell exactly what Harry is here, especially since after the prelude, we get almost none of Harry the secret-keeper or Harry the solo spy. As a TV show, CBS’ True Lies is a bottle rocket.

Like the film, the TV show centers on a spy named Harry (Steve Howey). His wife, Helen (Ginger Gonzaga), and their two teens believe him to be a dull computer ...

As a result, there is a lack of passion between the pair. It makes her the most watchable part of any scene, as she perfects that balance between action and comedy. While it was necessary to update Helen into a more savvy wife with her own skills and knowledge, bringing her into the fold so quickly is also the show’s biggest mistake. Within 26 minutes of the first episode, Harry’s cover is blown and Helen is thrust into his life as a spy. She believes her marriage is in a rut until her friend wonders whether the extended trips and secretive phone calls could be an affair. So when it came to adapting the film into a TV show, changes were necessary.

Helen's husband Harry (Steve Howey) is an international spy balancing family time and his latest case that could endanger humanity globally. But when work calls ...

So, it was the opposite of what Jamie did. “There was a stunt woman who actually falls out of the helicopter and it looks really jarring seeing it happen. “What I loved that Jamie did was the sexy dance where she falls over. I love that Jamie did it live while James [Cameron] was holding the camera. I was so hellbent on doing the dance while being sexy but I wanted to fall hard on the ground, then I wanted to be held down. I asked to do the stunt but was later told I couldn’t due to insurance issues,” Gonzaga shared with a laugh. Back to Helen’s come-to-Jesus moment when she’s dragged into this dangerous mission and completely unsure as to what’s real and what’s not. In the pilot, there’s no hint that their children could be dragged into future missions a’ la Spy Kids, but Gonzaga isn’t opposed to the idea. I love playing her and I want to protect her,” Gonzaga tells Deadline. We will have to wait and see. Harry thinks fast and figures out a way to make both his trip and his marriage work by combining a mission and a romantic trip to Paris. She’s been on autopilot as a wife and mom for so long that it’s so much fun when she gets thrown into highly stressful situations and she overly commits to them.

Steve Howey, star of the new television adaptation of the iconic 1994 Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick “True Lies,” often appears on-screen with an.

I think muscle memory is a huge part of it, so I don’t have to go that hard. For “True Lies” in particular, I knew I was going to be doing my own stunts, I knew it was going to be a lot of work. If I could go back in time, and give myself some advice I would say “work out more.” There were times, like, when I was on the TV show “Reba” (2001-2007), I was definitely enjoying the party scene, and there were times on “Shameless” (joining in 2010) where I was doing the same, but working out was always part of my lifestyle. To play a stripper in Stuber was a lot of fun. We did it a couple of times and then this one time I went to grab him and my finger just went back. When you last talked with M&F around five years ago, you were spending two to three hours in the gym, per session. A lot of my workouts are for physical reasons, but I think the main reason is for my mental and emotional health. Olympia, but he was able to bring his own unique experience of acting and staying in shape to a character that clicks in 2023. I was cut, that was just timing. I was a late bloomer in basketball. But, I grew up on sale boats in southern California so I was always swimming. Fortunately, however, in taking the gig, Howey was not expected to do an impersonation of the seven-time Mr.