“First of all, I didn’t plan for this to happen. It just sort of happened. And then it kept on happening… It’s complicated.” —Andrew Marsden (Stephen Mangan), Bliss
Not to be confused with the erotic Oxygen series from the aughts, Bliss could be easily renamed Gaslighting: The Series. Created and directed by David Cross (who also wrote or co-wrote every episode but the third), Bliss is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, just like its lead character, Andrew Marsden (Stephen Mangan), a husband and father—times two.
Marsden is an esteemed travel writer whose persona is predicated on his anonymity. (He’s known as “The Anonymous Traveler”; his books even have “by ?” on the covers.) Except his jet-setting is a lie on top of all of his other lies: He never goes any further than the Bristol Airport, and that’s only to change cars and drive back to one of his two families. Coupled with a life of lies, Andrew’s built a life of “convenience,” in the sense that his two separate lives are actually in the same British town. He spends a week—eight days at most—with one of his families before he’s “off to work,” to spend a week with his other family. Yes, he has a protocol for how he makes his wives believe he truly was in certain cities as well as one for how he mentions his family in his books.
Read LaToya Ferguson's full article on PasteMagazine.com