TV Reviews : Gallagher, Winningham Ignite Tale of ‘Love and Lies’

There’s something irresistibly squalid and passionate about murder for love. It’s especially hard to resist such a murder yarn if the undercover investigator falls for the chief suspect--a provocative twist in “Love and Lies” Sunday at 9 p.m. (Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42).

The casting is imaginative. Peter Gallagher (the darkly attractive guy in “sex, lies, and videotape”) plays the strangely sensitive suspect and Mare Winningham the quirky undercover detective whose romance with him ignites the plot.

The opening scene dramatizes a true-life murder case in which a mother and father are gunned down in their sleep. Alan Sharp’s script, layered with terse narrative drive, picks up on events two years later when Winningham’s saucy private eye casts a spell over Gallagher. Her object is to coax a confession out of him. Instead, they both tumble for each other, and the yeasty brew builds to a crisis of personal conscience.

G. W. Bailey’s snotty cop and E. Emmet Walsh’s unctuous private dick turn formulaic roles into crusty portraits. Director Roger Young’s tone and the frisky Winningham balance suspense with a light step that makes this dark tale dance rather than just thud along.

Gallagher, playing against the grain of his matinee-idol looks, also gives the show an offbeat and unexpected appeal, playing a sap of a lover you perfectly understand could be egged into a bloody act of desire.

There are some good lines, too. The jowly Walsh on the state’s hunger for the ultimate penalty: “Well, they want to kill someone for this. (The female accomplice) would be a hard one, being a woman and all with kids. The law’s kind of sexist that way.”