Television series

The Affair

Name: The Affair
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 2014
Cast: Dominic West, Maura Tierney, Jadon Sand, Ruth Wilson, Julia Goldani Telles

The Affair tells the same collapsing marriage twice, once from Noah's memory and once from Alison's, and the two versions never quite agree. It's moody, sun-bleached, unbearably intimate, and more interested in how people lie to themselves than in who's telling the truth. For anyone who likes their romance served with guilt and unreliable narration.

TVMaze rating

7.7

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Scenes from a Marriage2021

Chastain and Isaac trade blows in extended, near-unbearable two-handers as a marriage disintegrates in real time, shot with the same intimate, hand-held intensity that makes The Affair's quieter scenes sting.

But There's no mystery, no Montauk, no second timeline. Just two people talking, which is exactly the point but can feel relentless.

Big Little Lies2017

Secrets, coastal wealth, and a marriage built on something rotten, told through shifting perspectives that keep recalibrating what you think you know about these women.

But It's glossier and pulpier, with a murder-mystery hook The Affair never bothers with. Different appetite entirely.

Fleishman is in Trouble2022no page yet

A divorce story that deliberately makes you side with the wrong person for half the season before yanking the narrative rug out, much like Noah and Alison's dueling accounts.

But Jesse Eisenberg's character is exhausting by design, and the tonal swings into comedy might jar if you want pure ache.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Rashomon1950

This is the film that invented the unreliable, dueling-perspective structure The Affair builds its entire series around — same idea, seventy years earlier, in a courtroom instead of a bedroom.

Kurosawa invented the trick The Affair runs every episode: the same event, several tellings, each self-serving in a different way, until truth stops mattering as much as motive.

But It's a 1950 black-and-white Japanese court drama with none of the romantic heat — this is the structure with all the seduction stripped out.

Doctor Foster2015

A British affair drama that escalates from suspicion into something genuinely vicious, with a lead performance that turns quiet suburban betrayal into full-blown warfare.

But It trades The Affair's introspection for melodrama and momentum. Less mood, more plot.

The Undoing2020

Grant and Kidman play a marriage built on curated appearances that starts cracking the moment a secret surfaces, with the same wintry New York wealth and unraveling certainty.

But It leans into thriller mechanics and a whodunit ending that The Affair, to its credit, never needed.

Marriage Story2019

Baumbach gives both halves of a failing marriage equal, devastating screen time, refusing to let you fully condemn either one — the same generous cruelty The Affair specializes in.

But It's one film, one linear timeline, no structural trickery. If you loved the dueling-narrator gimmick specifically, this won't scratch that itch.

Unfaithful2002

Diane Lane's affair spirals into consequences with real weight and dread, capturing that same queasy mix of desire and self-destruction that fuels Noah and Alison's Montauk summer.

But It's a tighter, more conventional thriller-drama with none of the multi-perspective ambiguity that makes The Affair distinctive.

Little Fires Everywhere2020

Two women's colliding secrets and resentments are told with a similar attention to how memory and self-justification distort the past.

But It's more concerned with class and motherhood than romantic betrayal, so the emotional target is adjacent rather than identical.

Revolutionary Road2008

A marriage suffocating under suburban disappointment, with Winslet and DiCaprio making ordinary domestic failure feel operatic — the same slow-motion collapse The Affair stretches across seasons.

But It's bleaker and more claustrophobic with almost no hope offered, and it wraps everything up in two hours flat.

The Thin Blue Line1988

Same engine — contradictory memory reshaping the same events — but transplanted from infidelity into a true-crime documentary, proving the trick works when the stakes are life and death, not desire.

Errol Morris reconstructs a real murder through wildly conflicting eyewitness accounts, using stylised re-enactments that feel eerily like The Affair's warring flashbacks — except the stakes here are a man's execution.

But It's a documentary about a wrongful conviction, not a romance, and the register is investigative and coldly urgent rather than intimate or sensual.

BoJack Horseman2014

Same subject — self-mythologising narration and the gap between how someone tells their own story and what actually happened — but filtered through animation and comedy instead of prestige-drama seriousness.

An animated tragicomedy about a man who narrates his own life more sympathetically than he deserves, sabotaging relationships while insisting, at least to himself, that he's the wronged party.

But It's a cartoon about a talking horse that's frequently very funny, which is a jarring tonal leap if you want The Affair's straight-faced solemnity.