Questions of who to trust and how all of these characters connect, not to mention how they react to pressure and how far they will go when cornered, all make Tell Me Your Secrets an engaging watch, despite other notable flaws.

Creator Harriet Warner obviously has no lack of imagination, though she does exhibit a serious lack of restraint. The show does have its own mad energy and if you like crazy content measured by the pound it may be for you. If not, you could end up feeling battered by it all.

The first two parts of "Tell Me Your Secrets" are certainly engaging in a potboiler sense, but it's not at all clear that its makers can keep it up for 10 episodes.

The show goes on too many tangents, as if attempting to justify its own name, and none of them are as good or as resonant as the ones held onto by Emma, Mary, and John. Tut-tutting “Tell Me Your Secrets” for its fundamental darkness would be silly; it’s perfectly fine that Warner is inclined toward nihilism more so than hope. But she leans so far over in her efforts as seeing that goal through that the whole damn show falls flat on its face.

The three talented leads struggle valiantly to rise above such rapidly descending material, as murky and sticky as the swamps Emma and Jess travel through in St. James. ... Maybe in a different era, Tell Me Your Secrets would have fared better—but as it stands, 10 hours of depressing psychological warfare (scored by ominous string instruments that sound like they’re being strangled) is probably not something many are jonesing to dive into right now.

Tell Me Your Secrets is a bleak show that withholds information in order to ramp up the mystery, but to the detriment of a coherent story.