on the face of it

"I've had clients who on the face of it without IPP sentences might have faced fixed term sentences of four or five years which gives them a definite release date," he said.

Fact-checking is an essential part of journalism, but on the face of it this did not appear to be a difficult story to confirm.

After all that’s what everyone close to him told him to his face, and on the face of it, Donny seemed great.

It would seem an unlikely friendship on the face of it.

It's a good question because, on the face of it, no one should know anything about the relative performance of next year's engines, because the manufacturers are all working on them in isolation.