‘Echoes’

Identical twins behaving badly in the overlong seven part miniseries, Echoes sees seemingly perfectly laid plans go tragically wrong.

Since they were young, Leni and Gina (Michelle Monaghan) have secretly swapped their identities to confuse and hide. But as married adults they go further, swapping lives every 12 months. Gina lives a wealthy priviledged but childless LA life with successful analyst husband, Charlie (Daniel Sunjata) whilst Leni has remained in their home town of Mount Echo with husband Jack (Matt Bomer) and teenage daughter, Mattie. A few days short of their annual change, ‘Gina’ receives notification that ‘Lani’ has gone missing during a break-in at the family ranch.

What unravels is the very basis of the two sisters’ deceit both present and past as truths slowly come to the surface. Nothing is as straightforward as it seemed with ‘bad girl Gina’ responsible for all that preceded the present day. Sheriff Floss (Karen Robinson) is determined to get to the bottom of it. Horse rustling is one thing but murder and manslaughter is another. As Lani deals with the family fallout from the affair Gina (as Lani) had with ex-flame Dylan (Jonathan Tucker), so the norm, carefully constructed over many years, crumbles around her.

With its many flashbacks intermingled into the present day narrative, Echoes can be initially very confusing as to who is who. Whilst likely to be intentional by the nature of the overall storyline, such a construct makes it difficult to identify with either character: we are to be encouraged to believe they are wholly interchangeable. But that’s its weakness. They’re not. Identical though Lani and Gina may be, they are distinctively different personalities. Husbands, children, friends, father, older sister all fooled for 12 months at a time? Add the excesses of the storyline from chidlhood to adulthood as the bodies mount and the absurdities increase, what’s left is a tedious, badly scripted miniseries that is at times, unintentionally, funny. Pity Lani ‘I can fix this’ did not follow her own advice with the script.

Rating: 52%