A Couple of Lies Review: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
A Couple of Lies is a fast, twisty thriller with a strong cast and a great setting. The characters are hard to like, and some twists are easy to spot, but four short episodes keep the pace moving.
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Language: Swedish and English
Director: Kasper Barfoed
Cast: Frida Gustavsson, Fares Fares, Emma Appleton, Jakob Oftebro
A house swap sounds like a lovely idea until someone turns up dead in the garden. That is the hook of A Couple of Lies, a Swedish thriller that lands on Netflix on 30 October 2026. Its original title is Bytet, and it runs for just four episodes, which makes it a perfect weekend watch.
The story begins with Helene and Carl, played by Frida Gustavsson and Fares Fares. They leave their cold, stylish home in the Stockholm archipelago and move into a big, sunny villa in Sicily.
The villa belongs to Scarlett and Adam, played by Emma Appleton and Jakob Oftebro, who take the Swedish house in return. The two couples arrange the swap online, so they’ve never met. Both have plenty of money, yet neither side fully trusts the other.
Things go wrong soon after everyone settles in. A body turns up on the Sicilian property, and the people living there become the obvious suspects. From that point, the series becomes a game of lies, secrets and nasty surprises. Money, power and love are the main ingredients, and the show mixes them well.
If you watch a lot of mystery thrillers, you will probably guess some of the twists before they arrive. That seems to be on purpose. Part of the fun is feeling one step ahead, then finding out you missed something. The second episode is the weakest of the four, mainly because it reveals too much in a clumsy way. Luckily, the last two episodes bring in fresh turns that lift the pace again.
One thing to know before you start is that almost nobody here is easy to like. Once you get to know these four people, they come across as selfish and sneaky. Whether that bothers you depends on how much you need a hero to cheer for. The cast does a solid job, though.
Fares Fares and Frida Gustavsson are familiar faces, and Emma Appleton and Jakob Oftebro match them well. The mix of Swedish and English dialogue also suits the story, since one lead is an American woman living in Italy.
The series is based on the novel of the same name by crime author Stefan Ahnhem. Amanda Högberg and Axel Stjärne wrote the adaptation, the same pair behind Camilla Läckberg’s Netflix series The Glass Dome. Kasper Barfoed directs, and he also made The Chestnut Man, La Palma and The Asset. To be honest, those earlier shows worked better for me, but this one is still a hit waiting to happen.
If you like stories where nobody tells the whole truth, our review of You, Me, Us asks what happens when one partner wants a child, and the other never does. And if you want something darker, our Balaraw: Blood Island Review covers a Filipino vampire mystery with a big heart.
A Couple of Lies will not shock you every minute, but it keeps you curious right to the end. With only four episodes, it is easy to finish in one night.
A Couple of Lies is streaming on Netflix from 30 October 2026.