Critic Reviews

You’ve got a whole chessboard of polyamorous rivalries that play out at breathless pace. Yes, the subtle deeps of Hampton’s work are absent. But six episodes in there’s a sense that this moreish rondo could go on and on.

It’s hard to create a new story for 230-year-old characters and make it seem like it was part of those characters’ stories the whole time. But Harriet Warner and her staff have been able to do that with Dangerous Liaisons.

In short, it is an absolute delight, the rare period series that doesn’t have any grand ambitions of saying anything particularly meaningful about history, mankind, or morality. Instead, it simply encourages its audience to have fun watching a whole bunch of very attractive people concocting elaborate schemes for their own advancement and being generally terrible to one another.

For all that it is about love, sex and the deceits that come with it, this Dangerous Liaisons resists becoming encumbered by any deeper messages about the damage people are willing to do to each other to get ahead. It’s about watching Camille learn the manipulative ropes from a mistress of them and seeing how far she can get on her wits alone.

Ratchets up the sex while dragging out (and out and out) the story.

The show is fun to look at and, in a welcome update, features an inclusive cast of game and capable performers, with Englert proving to be a resourceful lead. But the tone grows a bit exhausting; the show lacks the control or unified sense of its world of, say, the new “Gossip Girl,” a contemporary series clearly in thrall to the “Liaisons” legacy.

It’s a passable addition to Starz’s growing monarchy-themed programming. It doesn’t do enough to stand out, and feels mainly superfluous.

Creator Harriet Warner spins the central characters of the book into a dull, plodding prequel that simultaneously apes the camp appeal of the 1988 film while also stretching it into a dour tale of destiny and conspiracy.

It shows no interest in plumbing their personalities or psyches beyond the basic motivations required by the narrative, and no curiosity about their quirks or inconsistencies or senses of humor. ... For all the time Englert and Denton spend snuggled up together in various states of undress, they struggle to conjure any real sparks.