# The Affair (2014)

> A New York schoolteacher and a grieving Montauk waitress begin an affair whose emotional fallout reverberates through both of their families.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/54797

## Facts

- Seasons: 5
- Episodes: 53
- Episode runtime: 56 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama, romance, mystery
- Created by: Sarah Treem, Hagai Levi
- Network: Showtime
- Cast: Dominic West, Ruth Wilson, Maura Tierney, Joshua Jackson, Julia Goldani Telles, Jake Siciliano, Jadon Sand, Leya Catlett
- TMDB rating: 7.9/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2699110/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: mild
- Tone: melancholic, intimate, brooding, sensual, tense

## What critics say

Audiences broadly rate The Affair as a positive, emotionally absorbing drama, with praise for its performances and its rotating perspectives on a single affair.

## Synopsis

The Affair (2014-2019) is an American premium cable drama series created by Sarah Treem and Hagai Levi for Showtime. Schoolteacher and budding novelist Noah Solloway (Dominic West) is a married New York City father of four whose affair with Alison Bailey (Ruth Wilson), a young waitress from Montauk at the end of Long Island, pulls both of them away from the lives they know. Alison is trying to piece herself back together after a tragedy, while Noah's wife Helen Solloway (Maura Tierney) and Alison's husband Cole Lockhart (Joshua Jackson) become the other principal figures whose perspectives reshape the story. The engine of the show is the question of what the affair actually was, and each season replays key events through alternating first person accounts, so the same afternoon or argument surfaces differently depending on who remembers it. The five seasons, comprising fifty-three episodes, form one continuing serialized story rather than a case of the week. Set in present day Long Island and Manhattan, the series carries a melancholy, intimate tone, with grief, guilt, class friction, and the wreckage of long marriages at its center. Fans of Big Little Lies, The Leftovers, and Mad Men will find resonance in its patient, adult attention to fractured domestic life.

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- [Gypsy (2017)](https://ember.film/tv/58938)
- [The Family (2016)](https://ember.film/tv/55813)
- [Wanderlust (2018)](https://ember.film/tv/70029)
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