The Affair

Noah Solloway is a New York City teacher with a long marriage, four kids and a stalled career as a novelist. While spending summers in Montauk he begins an affair with Alison, a young waitress and married woman who is coping with a recent tragedy. The show follows how the relationship reshapes both their lives and the lives of people around them, as family bonds, careers and memories are tested. Episodes replay key events from different viewpoints, so what one character insists happened rarely lines up with another character's version of the same night.

The series premiered on Showtime in 2014, created by Sarah Treem and Hagai Levi. It was developed as an original cable drama with an emphasis on fragmented storytelling and rotating perspectives, helping it stand out among contemporary prestige dramas.

The Affair attracted industry attention and earned multiple nominations that highlighted its cast and writing, boosting the visibility of several performers. Critics and awards groups frequently pointed to the leads' performances when recognizing the show during awards season.

The program left a notable mark on television storytelling because of its use of unreliable narrators and split episodes that replay incidents from opposing viewpoints. That structural choice became a frequent reference point in discussions about subjective memory, and it influenced later series that toyed with perspective and fractured timelines.

Critical response shifted over time, with early seasons praised for strong acting and the novelty of its structure, and later seasons receiving more mixed reactions for uneven pacing. Central themes include memory, truth, the ripple effects of choices, intimacy and grief, and the series keeps viewers guessing about who to trust while putting domestic life under a microscope.