Non-faithful comment – if you understand some of the unpleasant choices in this show, please let us know | Television

Tthe film Faithless, a violent adultery tale directed by Liv Ullmann from the screenplay of the great Ingmar Bergman, was something of a shock even when it came out in 2000: the division of the arty middle class was no longer a common film currency. Arthouse indulgence was never over and until now, but, for generations of viewers in 2026 after weaning on premium streaming, the high waves of the reboot of Faithless TV, adapted from the writings of Bergman and Sara Johnsen and directed by Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right Spy Watch), Tinker .

We smoke on the plane and wear corduroy suits deep maroon: yes, it is 1977 and, in Stockholm, the actress Marianne (Frida Gustavsson) and her pianist husband Markus (August Wittgenstein) are visited by Markus’s oldest friend David (Gustav Lindh), and the wannabes divorce film London returned to London. The second episode shows the second time, this time, when the respected director David (Jesper Christensen) and the former actress Marianne (Lena Endre, who was the young Marianne in Ullman’s movie) meet again and think about the damage caused by their relationship.

The run of six episodes gives more time to explore the beginning of the relationship, and – after leaving the film’s device, when the elder David is an unreliable narrator, considering the story from his past – to treat Marianne as a three-dimensional woman and a legitimate institution.

This is not the case in the early stages as Marianne’s relationship with David is largely lost in the pursuit of Bohemian ambitions. Their interaction is dripping with sauce from the outside: even at the first dinner chez Marianne/Markus, David is crying with his broken family one second and Marianne is eyeing her next “blackcurrant”. The next day, after Markus goes to a good job, Marianne and David are out with his car, discussing “the difference between porn and pornography” as he takes him to a meeting at a production company and looks around his new beautiful house, which he shows her painting “pale blue”.

When they stop at a fast food joint, they sit on their knees and see themselves in the window with a sudden: uh-oh. It’s one of the many times Alfredson shoots people expressively, perhaps in homage to Bergman, although it’s not at all Bergmanesque in the sense of mirroring the unsympathetic portrayal of a real person. It usually only takes two people in one frame who are not standing next to each other. Sometimes it’s confusing: if you know why the camera goes from David to Marianne, looking at the mirror where we can see, write inside – especially on thick paper, with green paint that shows the pain of attraction.

Marianne is difficult to understand. He mocks David for his recent appreciation of women’s desires and, with David’s charms being perverted and youthful – the part to see what Marianne sees in him would be if you only liked a Britpop singer – it seems that their kink could be a teacher/love child, even though they are both older than 10 children. But Marianne shows that she is not angry: what will Markus think if he finds out, she asks if their girl who is afraid of the wrath of parents because of bad behavior. “We haven’t crossed the line,” David tells him when he still doesn’t agree, but, as any grown man should know, he’s crossed every emotional path imaginable.

The point of the piece will be that the passion of David and Marianne has negative consequences for those who are close to them, especially their children, and for the lovers themselves – we wait to see if the coming will be as dangerous as it was in the film – but for this to happen we must feel that the two are cursed by an attraction that builds until it cannot be denied. Gustavsson and Lindh’s sizzling chemistry kills this. They are bad people, not ordinary people whose interests push them to do bad things. Although written by a woman, Marianne seems like a fictional husband of another man’s wife, who feels that bad writing and blunt speech are inevitable.

And yet Faithless goes down easy, luring us back to the chic of the late 1900s, and a world where everyone is an artist, strong conversations are held over cheap red wine and sex is a universal commodity. Its retro look is mesmerizing enough. Don’t try this at home.