10 TV Shows That Make You Question Your Own Reality
6. The Affair
More of a head-scratcher based in reality than a sci-fi jaw-dropper like most of the entries on this list, The Affair offers up questions on the concept of perspective and how different situations in the plot play out differently from each of the main characters’ point of view. The series features proper star power in the leads of Dominic West and Ruth Wilson, playing people who engage in an extramarital affair with one another at significant personal cost.
Episodes are set up with the framework of the first half being told from one character’s perspective, while the second half flips those events in a retelling from the other character’s point of view. This means you have instances throughout where the exact events that happen throughout the show are blurred through the distinct lens of each individual narrator. This means that there is often a disconnect between West and Wilson’s characters over who is in fact the lead initiator of the adulterous affair at various points of the plot, with the waters muddied by each character’s background and additional baggage.
By utilising the unreliable narrator effect to tell two very different sides of the same story, the show is a bit of a mind-bender insofar as it will make you seriously reflect on your day-to-day interactions with family and friends, and make you second-guess how your actions and words could be construed in a massively different light from another perspective. The Affair isn’t a jaw-dropper of a show for its philosophical or existential questions, but is certainly one that raises a lot of personal and emotional questions that will leave you inwardly reflecting for a long time after.