Source : the age
No one in the world loves spy dramas more than my father-in-law, a man who will only commit hours of his life to a show if someone is getting double-crossed, preferably while travelling on a fake passport to a far-flung corner of the globe.
He doesn’t discriminate. Any series will do. Homeland, Slow Horses, The Americans, The Night Manager, Day of the Jackal – you name it, he’s seen it. So imagine my surprise when I asked for his thoughts on The Agency – perhaps the best spy drama on TV, which is now in its second season – and was met with nothing but a confused look.
I peppered him with prompts: “The Agency? Michael Fassbender? A CIA agent in London? The spy show that gently forces us to consider America’s waning global influence while hinting we might be on the brink of a new world order?” He assured me he had not seen the show but would add it to the list.
Sadly, this was not an isolated incident. The Agency is so successfully undercover that very few people are across it (either that, or no one pays for Paramount+). But I refuse to live in a world where The Agency flies under the radar. So, like any self-respecting CIA agent, my mission is to recruit as many assets as possible. First it was my father-in-law, and now it’s your turn.
What is The Agency about?
At its core, the series operates inside the paranoid, fluorescent-lit pressure cooker of London Station, the CIA’s primary European hub. Fassbender plays Brandon Colby, codename “Martian”, a senior covert operative abruptly recalled to London after six years living a double life in Ethiopia, leaving behind his married lover, Sudanese anthropologist Samia Zahir (Jodie Turner-Smith).
Promoted to deputy director of operations, Martian must navigate the psychological bends of re-entering civilian life, reconnecting with his estranged daughter and shedding his cover identity. This delicate balance unravels spectacularly when Samia, Martian’s only weak spot, turns up in London. Before long, the usually protocol-obsessed CIA agent is breaking the rules to keep the relationship alive.
Beyond Martian’s personal tailspin, the walls of London Station house a network of operatives whose entire existences are defined by transactional relationships. Richard Gere brings significant heft to station chief Bosko, the man responsible for keeping the White House happy, which usually involves making sure no one dies and the mission comes in under budget (yes, even the CIA is cost-cutting). Meanwhile, Henry Ogletree (Jeffrey Wright) serves as the counter-intelligence chief and Martian’s direct boss. A lifelong agent, Ogletree is understandably suspicious of everyone and everything, all of the time. But The Agency comes into its own when dealing with the junior agents, like Danny (Saura Lightfoot-Leon), an academic recruited by Martian.
In many ways, Danny is an audience surrogate, curious about the CIA but naive to its inner workings. Together, the pair present as a classic case of before and after. Danny is the wide-eyed recruit convinced she can change the world, and Martian knows from brutal experience that the work only ever changes the person doing it. And rarely for the better.
“People are fascinated by the kind of people that go into this line of work and what kind of people come out of it at the end,” Fassbender recently told the BBC. “Martian was once idealistic and full of hope, then his moral compass gets eroded by the things he has to do and the sacrifices that go into it.”
How is this different from any other spy show?
Sorry Ethan Hunt, James Bond and all the other male spies with similar-sounding names: The Agency is not a world of Aston Martins, vodka martinis and high-speed chases. Instead, the series frames contemporary espionage as a chess match fought across multiple fronts simultaneously, from African resource diplomacy to Eastern European proxy networks.
Written by brothers Jez and John Butterworth (who also penned the criminally underrated 2010 political drama Fair Game), The Agency is unafraid of borrowing plot lines from the current news cycle.
In season one, a CIA asset goes missing in Russian-occupied Ukraine, requiring high-level negotiations to spare his life. In season two, Danny goes undercover in Tehran to target Iranian nuclear facilities because the US government is obsessively monitoring uranium enrichment operations tied to the Fordow plant. Sound familiar?
And much like the modern geopolitical landscape, the minute one crisis is averted, another appears in its place. Much of the action takes place in situation rooms and intelligence briefings, which admittedly sounds low-energy but really isn’t.
Take it from me: watching Fassbender’s Martian unpack the importance of diplomatic plausible deniability is just as exciting as Daniel Craig emerging from the sea in Speedos.
French provenance, American confidence
If you’ve ever watched Antiques Roadshow, you’ll know that the most valuable cultural artefacts often have a French provenance, and so it is with The Agency.
The American series is a remake of Eric Rochant’s Le Bureau des Légendes (The Bureau) – available on SBS On Demand and well worth the watch – often cited as the gold standard of the genre. And when I say remake, I mean remake in the truest sense: the first season of The Agency is almost beat-for-beat the same as The Bureau. This would usually be a cause for concern, but given The Bureau boasts a 96 per cent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach makes sense.
Rather than coming across as a cheap Hollywood knock-off, The Agency has pulled off a rare balancing act, maintaining the original’s French sensibilities while ramping up the production values. Alex Berger, a producer of The Bureau, says the US series “respected what we did originally” while upping “the scope, the scale and the ambition”. “We did the first season for €15 million ($24.6 million) in 2013, and the first season of The Agency is over 10 times that,” he told Variety. Money well spent, I reckon.
The even better news is that The Bureau ran for five seasons, and with The Agency having only just released season two, there’s plenty of time for everyone (you, my father-in-law) to join the bandwagon. Consider this your super secret tip-off.
The Agency is now streaming on Paramount+.
