Using Jack White’s cover of U2’s “Love is Blindness” is the most heavy-handed misstep made by The Agency, seemingly telegraphing the fatal failing of its protagonist and, with it, its future twists.
It’s a strange error considering that otherwise, Jez and John-Henry Butterworth’s Showtime series, executive-produced by George Clooney and Darkest Hour director Joe Wright, and premiering Nov. 29, is a crisp, methodical thriller about professional spies and the cunning deceptions they perpetrate and mask beneath cold, clean, orderly surfaces. A star-studded saga about the tensions between the personal and the professional, the real and the phony, it plays an intricate and involving game of cat and mouse—and presents a layered portrait of espionage as an act of performance—with dispassionate precision.
Martian (Michael Fassbender) is a CIA spook who’s extracted from a mission in Ethiopia and returned to London, where he’s expected to smoothly reacclimate to his former life, including with his now-teenage daughter Poppy (India Fowler), who’s none too pleased with her dad for being MIA for the past six years.
The CIA knows that agents in Martian’s circumstances often find this process difficult, and thus they constantly surveille and tail him at his home (a new apartment furnished by the agency) and around the city. Furthermore, they’ve bugged his residence to listen in on everything and anything he does—a state of affairs that Martian detects as soon as he walks into the place, and which he combats by carrying out private business near a running shower in the bathroom whose wall vent serves as his favorite hiding place for, among other things, fake IDs.
Fassbender’s covert operative is a variation on his disciplined assassin in David Fincher’s The Killer, the main differences being that Martian knows he’s somewhat insane—in a lengthy Episode 3 speech, he makes clear that you have to be “nuts” to willingly do this job—and also has genuine emotions, no matter how carefully he guards and stifles them.
The object of his affection is Sami (Jodie Turner-Smith), his lover from his Ethiopia assignment, and the fact that he lies to his handler Naomi (Katherine Waterston) about how he broke things off with her is an immediate tip-off that he’s not being honest with anyone about his detachment from the role he was playing. Martian’s state of mind is of particular importance to his boss Henry (Jeffrey Wright) and, by extension, Henry’s superior Bosko (Richard Gere), and keeping tabs on him as he habitually evades observation becomes a frustrating and worrisome chore for both of them.
Director Wright sets the tone for The Agency with two stylish opening installments, drenching everything in sleek, shiny, chilly hues, and staging his action with rousing camerawork that follows cagey men and women as they navigate bustling environments with intense purpose. The series is invigoratingly propulsive, with Fassbender’s Martian the embodiment of its stern, swift, efficient energy. To put it bluntly—it looks great and moves like gangbusters, and those qualities amplify its mystery and suspense. There’s plenty of both of those, given that at the same time Martian is trying to cope with being himself again, the agency is in the midst of a crisis that has the potential to spark a catastrophic global conflict.
Seemingly out of the blue, a CIA asset known as Coyote (Alex Reznik) leaves a nightclub, drunkenly causes chaos racing through the streets in his car, and ultimately vanishes into thin air. This is of significant concern to Henry and Bosko, since Coyote was their prime source of intel on Ukraine, and knew about numerous agency operatives and undertakings.
Through research into Coyote, clues emerge about his possible alcoholism (and a cover-up about it perpetrated by one of the CIA’s own), and fears mount that he might have been snatched by an enemy nation or, perhaps, was a double-agent who’d finally ditched his cover (or had it blown) and fled into the arms of his true benefactors. Either way, Coyote’s disappearance throws the CIA into disarray, forcing them to track down some of Coyote’s contacts and cancel a Ukrainian mission, codename “Felix,” being spearheaded by Henry’s brother-in-law Charlie (Edward Holcroft).
The Agency is dense and solemn, and in its first three episodes (which were all that critics received pre-debut), it develops a variety of tantalizing threads which suggest that no one is being completely upfront and everyone has a secret (or three) to hide. No sooner has he returned to London than Martian is contacted by Sami, who just so happens to have come to the country on a visa to attend university classes, and who proves an enticement he cannot resist. As the aforementioned U2 song warns, love can blind, although despite giving in to temptation, Martian grows suspicious of Sami. Viewers will too, and while her true nature and aims remain unknown during its initial chapters, the show does a subpar job of hiding the fact that she’s not what she appears to be.
Still, there’s a brisk steeliness to the series, not simply aesthetically but narratively, complete with inside-baseball jargon and curt, sarcastic banter that’s like the 21st-century version of hardboiled tough talk. It boasts a phenomenal cast and alluring subplots about a doctor (Harriet Sansom Harris) brought in to assess Martian and a rookie agent (Saura Lightfoot-Leon) sent to Iran to identify nuclear engineers. What that has to do with Martian, the Coyote calamity, or the Felix mission—which quickly goes sideways, much to Henry and Bosko’s alarm—is, at this early stage, anyone’s guess. However, it further tangles the proceedings in geopolitical knots, teasing grander conspiracies and, with them, graver consequences.
With its illustrious pedigree and accomplished set-up, The Agency promises to be a must-see A-list affair. Nonetheless, the fact that it’s premiering to so little fanfare—almost as if Showtime didn’t want people to know it existed—is a possible warning sign about its ability to successfully execute its tale. Time will tell, yet for now, it’s a gripping spy story about the lies people tell themselves and each other, and the slippery truths they refuse to face—or, worse, can no longer recognize.
