It’s always disappointing when a show with a cast as stellar as the one in Paramount+‘s The Agency premieres and the show ends up being… fine. It’s not terrible, but it’s also nothing special, either. With the second season underway, has the show distinguished itself from other espionage series?
THE AGENCY SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: “KHARTOUM, SUDAN.” As we hear explosions and shots in the background, two cars drive up.
The Gist: Samia Zahir (Jodie Turner-Smith), who is being held captive by Sudanese intelligence, is shoved into the trunk of one of the cars after being interrogated. She is becoming a higher-profile asset, and she’s being transported back to prison. However, the two cars are attacked en route; the driver of the car Sami is in manages to escape, however.
In London, at the CIA bureau office, Sami is pretty much all Martian (Michael Fassbender) can think of; they fell in love when he was on a deep undercover assignment. After informing his MI6 contact, Robinshaw (Elena Saurel), that his colleague Hannah Watson (Nathalie Barclay) might be a vulnerable target, the contact tells him about the failed attempt to exfiltrate Sami, which enrages him. “You kicked the fucking wasp’s nest,” he growls. “Now they know she’s valuable!” He is later paid a visit by another MI6 contact, James Richardson (Hugh Bonneville) and finds out that they know where Sami is being held.
Back at the office, Martian and Owen (John Magaro) debrief Coyote (Alex Reznik), with the psychiatrist, Dr. Blake (Harriet Sansom Harris), observing. After being exfiltrated from his deep cover in Belarus, he gets defensive when Owen and Martian broach the subject of whether he took some of the money flowing through the organization he was in.
In Iran, Danny (Saura Lightfoot-Leon) is working with a scientist named Zak (Shaheen Jafargholi). Her mission is trying to figure out whether the government is moving around nuclear waste. They both go to a party hosted by Hassan Zamani (Keanush Tafreshi), the son of a prominent government official involved in the country’s nuclear power, where drugs and booze flow. The volatile Hassan attacks Zak when he thinks Zak is eyeballing his girlfriend.
Martian, department head Henry Ogeltree (Jeffrey Wright) and bureau head Jim Bosko (Richard Gere) are praised by the CIA director (Dominic West) about Coyote’s operation and are shown a new deep cover asset placed in the Russian military. But soon, a video of that asset being executed is uncovered. Martian notices that one of the executioner’s tattoos looks like a U.S. Marine symbol. Once the person who is in the video is identified, Bosko tells Henry to find who leaked the information to the former Marine.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by created by Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth and based on the French series The Bureau, The Agency reminds us of a bit of a cross between Homeland and The Wire.
Our Take: Like the first season, The Agency feels like it should be a better show than it actually is. The cast is stellar. The contemplative tone the show takes, with Martian’s stream of consciousness being paired with purposeful camera movements like pans and push-ins, make the show different than most in a usually aggro genre. But, save for one storyline, the show continues to profile as a standard-grade spy drama.
That one storyline, of course, is Martian and Sami. His love for Sami is so strong that he’s using all of the backchannels he knows of to track her movements as Sudanese intelligence moves her around. His hope, of course, is that the Sudanese release her, and he can retire from the CIA and start their lives together (after she recovers and is debriefed, of course). Even though Fassbender and Turner-Smith don’t share the screen in the first episode, the chemistry the two of them fostered in the first season can be seen in Fassbender’s sense of loss and longing as he gets information about her.
The other stories? They’re fine. Even watching rookie agent, Danny, navigating a touchy situation in Iran, feels like it feeds into stereotypes more than craft an intriguing story that defies viewer expectations.
Performance Worth Watching: Fassbender does a great job making Martian vulnerable, as we see it in his anger and frustration that Sami hasn’t been extracted from Sudan yet.
Sex And Skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: For MI6’s diplomatic help to extract Sami, Martian offers Hassan Zamani to Robinshaw, without telling her which of his agents is close to him in Iran.
Sleeper Star: Jeffrey Wright and Richard Gere aren’t exactly sleepers, but their presence not only lends the show some gravitas, but they have some funny chemistry with each other.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Danny sees that the women at Hassan’s party are taking off their hijabs and changing into more revealing dresses, she takes off her sweater and pulls her long skirt up to make it into a cocktail dress. And she ends up looking just fine after tying something around her waist!
Our Call: STREAM IT. Just like during its first season, The Agency should be more than what it is, given its cast and the contemplative style. It’s not, but it’s entertaining enough for fans of the espionage genre to watch while doing other things around the house.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
