“Go and pretend to be someone you’re not. Lie to everyone. Risk your life on a daily basis. Then come home. Just f’in deal. No glamour. No money. No exploding watch. A nation needs protecting, it builds an organization, the CIA. This department, it seeks us out, targets us individuals who need something, something they can’t get anywhere else. It nurtures us. Weans us. Feeds us and sends us out into the world to behave in entirely unhealthy, devious, deviant, and dangerous ways. And when we come back it asks us how we feel. And all the while it’s hoping we don’t suddenly flip and can no longer do the job.”
From the opening credits of the pilot, The Agency lets you know exactly what kind of a show it intends to be. It prepares us in a quick instant for what we should expect. How does it do that so fast? It’s the opening notes of the U2 song Love Is Blindness, performed by Jack White. The song and the graphics of those credits look and sound like an iconic James Bond film credits sequence. It doesn’t hurt that there was a time that Michael Fassbender was under serious consideration for the role of James Bond. I don’t know how serious it was. I don’t know how close he might have actually gotten. What I do know is that The Agency gives him the chance to live out a very Bond-like fantasy. He gets to have a blast, and we get to have a blast watching it happen. If you haven’t caught the series on Paramount+ as of yet, you have a chance to bring it home on DVD now with The Agency Season One out now. It’s worth the look. It’s worth owning.
“My mission was to make contacts. Meet people in a certain environment. Observe them, get to know them, and see if they know anything useful. It’s people who want to help or advance their own cause. My job was to identify relevant people.”
That’s the job of CIA field operative Martian, played by Fassbender and, yeah, pronounced like the planet. As the series opens, he is being pulled out suddenly from an op he’s been running for six years. He’s not happy about the quick recall, and there’s a complication. That complication is Sami Zahir (Turner-Smith). She wasn’t part of the op or his cover, but she is someone he became close with during those six years. He lies to his handlers and the CIA when he tells them it was a quick and easy out. But that lie and the feelings that caused it are going to become a huge part of this first season storyline. His direct handler is Naomi, played by Katherine Waterston, who also co-stared with Fassbender 10 years ago in Steve Jobs. The reason he has been brought home is to help her with a new recruit. She has been training Danny, played by Saura Lightfoot-Leon to go undercover as a geology grad student. The professor she has been sent as her mission will be picking a star student to go with him to Iran to study geology, but they believe she can be placed in a position to learn about their nuclear program. Much of the season follows her development, and I suspect she’ll play an even larger part in the second season, because this one only takes her to finally getting stationed in Iran. They built up her training enough for us to know she’ll be important in upcoming episodes.
“It was dangerous, It was wrong. It had no future, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
Our characters are stationed in the London office of the CIA. Richard Gere is Bosko, the head of the office. Next in command and a friend of Martian’s is Jeffery Wright in yet another powerful performance as Henry. The office has some serious fires to put out. A long-term operative in Belarus has vanished and is believed and later confirmed to have been taken by a Russian general. The guy knows a lot about many embedded operatives, and they have to get him back before he’s turned over to the Russian government. They end up having time, because the General is using the spy code-name Coyote as a chip to get him at the big-boys’ table in the Russian government. This mission takes a lot of the season’s time and is resolved this season, so it’ll likely be off the books in the second season.
Another “fire” involves Middle Eastern nations dealing secretly with China to create an energy deal which wouldn’t be good for America or the UK. But Martian remains distracted. He’s trying to make up the missing six years with his daughter, Poppy (Fowler). Unfortunately, he can’t let go of Sami, and he begins to run a rogue operation to get close to her. It’s going to get him in deep trouble, and it will put his other work at risk. Lucky for Martian it turns out she does have value. She’s a part of the secret negotiations the office wants to infiltrate, but will she betray her own country, husband, and career for Martian? You’ll have to watch along to find out. The answer is indeed riveting.
The series is based on a French television series called Le Burreau des Legendes created by Eric Rochant. There’s a lot going on here, and you really have to be paying attention. This is not one of those shows you stream in the background while you’re texting the world. The cast is terrific, and there’s not a weak link in the bunch. It’s certainly interesting to see Richard Gere doing something. I honestly can’t remember in what it was I saw him last. He doesn’t have a lot of heavy lifting to do here. Most of that is for Fassbender and Wright. I love the chemistry there, and Wright is just that good that he’s going to carry a lot of a show on his back.
Two interesting small parts have The Wire’s Dominic West as the Director of the CIA. It’s interesting because he’s a Brit once again playing with an American accent even though this show plays out in London where there are a lot of Brits. Speaking of Brits, look for Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville as the head of British Intelligence. He’s an old mate of Martian’s, but he ends up being one of the guys to watch out for. It’s a show about secrets and betrayal, and not just among enemies, but friends as well. Bonneville is a huge presence just as he was on Downton Abbey; we just don’t get to see a lot of him.
Someone on the writing staff is a huge fan of American football. Terms like quarterback blitz, fleaflicker, and concussion protocol get dropped quite a bit. It’s a smart series that will absolutely be back next year. I know this because most if not all of it has been shot. Here you get 10 episodes on three discs, and there aren’t any extras. And once again I have dedicated about 10 hours to delve into a new show so that I can report back to you guys. I gotta do something with my time. “I mean really. Would you prefer I kill people?”
