The Agency: Season 1

I can’t seem to avoid Michael Fassbender these days. If he showed up in my fucking backyard tomorrow, I wouldn’t be surprised. The man is everywhere. Yet he makes very little impression. And maybe that’s the point. He’s a dude who often plays American and almost always keeps it low-key. Too low-key. Brits do that shit. Americans do not. Be more American, brah. But you don’t hire Fassbender for hyperbole and throwing fits. You hire him for a quiet confidence, and the big surprise when this seemingly skinny Englishman strips off his shirt — and he will strip off his shirt — to reveal a ripped physique with literally not a pinch of anything anywhere. His whole person screams (but doesn’t literally scream) control and discipline. Which is what we’re supposed to think and believe about his CIA character, Martian, in The Agency. Yes, Martian.

But that’s the thing. This man, who is a complete straight arrow, rule-following specimen of spycraft tries to throw all the shit away for a lady. A lady! Because, despite being warned over and over, he fell in love while under deep cover. One could hardly blame him, of course, as Jodie Turner-Smith is maximally singular. But his adoration for her and, frankly, his unprofessionalism because of her is pretty disappointing. I mean this is Fassbender we’re talking about! The man, the actor built to play a spy. The perfect English gentleman type with his still body and perfectly tailored clothes that are not the least bit flashy, but are probably incredibly expensive. The funny part is, the only other dude I’ve probably seen even more than Fassbender of late is Jeffrey Wright. Is the man dying? He seems to be banking performances and taking every role that comes across his desk. Including this one as the London deputy station chief and Martian’s direct boss. He does his Wright thing, which means he too is kind of low-key and still. But, hey everyone! We also have Richard Gere, who is Wright’s boss and the London station chief. He’s the one who gets to get heated. Seems like a stressful job. The man looks like he’s always on the verge of getting his head chewed off. It’s good to see him back. At least the last thing I saw him in was 2002’s Unfaithful where he plays what I believe asshat Internet trolls call a cuck.

So, first, I guess one thing that makes this show a little different in the scheme of CIA shows is that it takes places predominantly in London. There are no jaunts to Virginia, or even too many far-flung adventures in Marrakech. Well, until later on, that is. But essentially the plot follows the… Man, I really shouldn’t have watched this series and Black Bag simultaneously. Fassbender playing a spy type in both and both involving the agency he works for losing something and having to get it back. I’m starting to conflate the two in my brain. But, yeah, in this case the CIA has lost one of its major assets, a dude named Coyote. Not his real name, of course, but he’s the lynchpin for some sort of clandestine operation and a network of informants. I’m not going to go into it because there is a lot of spycraft and overly complicated maneuvers, but trust me that it feels authentic as far as I can make out. Anyhow, Coyote vanishes and it’s on this CIA London office to find him, secure him and bring him in before whatever he knows and whoever he knows gets out there. That’s the simple long and short of it.

Enter Martian, pulled back from his assignment in Africa after six years. Building a life, falling in love and probably breaking all sorts of rules, written and unwritten, with the aforementioned relationship with Turner-Smith’s character, Samia. Life back in London is sad for our Martian. He really misses his babe. His life. But, hey, this is what he signed up for when he joined the CIA. Jeffrey Wright seemingly reminding him of that every second of every day. He’s his boss/buddy, sure, but he chastises him like he’s his mom. Meanwhile, protocol dictates that any agent coming back from a long assignment needs to be tailed 24-7 to make sure nothing weird happened to him while he was out of the eye-line of the agency. It’s just what they do. So, when Samia coincidently shows up in London, Martian is not only distracted from his mission, he has the added headache of having to ditch his detail in order to meet for some sex-laden hotel rendezvous with her. Did I mention Samia is a married woman? So many complications. Is it a coincidence she just happened to show up in London? She theoretically doesn’t know he’s CIA, but does she? Is she, in fact, playing him? Is she the femme fatale? The one thing he will break every rule to protect and be with? Such tension!

Meanwhile, the rest of the CIA crew who aren’t trying to bang a married lady are also having their own issues. Even Jeffrey Wright is compromising his job by sharing secrets in order to protect his family. Others are compromising even small things because of personal relationships and attachments. I wouldn’t say the ship is watertight. There’s also a whole side quest of sorts with this young agent, Danny (Saura Lightfoot-Leon), whose cover story is that she’s a woman from Spain with an American accent who is supposed to get herself into an Iranian exchange program by posing as a geophysics graduate student. A field she knows absolutely nothing about. It’s absurd. Like truly stupid. Her cover would be exposed in two seconds by anyone with half a brain. Both her Spanish-ness, as well as her knowledge of a field that she would have had to study for years to even have an eighth of the knowledge she displays in the show after reading some flash cards with her handler, Katherine Waterston. She also goes through the identical torture and loyalty test as in another CIA show, Lioness. The difference being that she ends up hooking up on the regular with the torturer afterward. Kinky. Weird.

While The Agency may have some interesting twists and turns and clearly put some thought into the spy part of the spy story, Ms. Hipster and I kept looking at each asking why it was so slow and quiet? Somber is fine sometimes — and it is somber — but Fassbender and Wright’s stillness cast a pall over the whole thing. With the exception of the occasional John Magaro nebbish act, there is no light here. They try to infuse a little personality into the thing by having Martian interact with this college-aged, estranged daughter. But those scenes feel a bit forced and outside the main narrative. She’s just a pawn, a pressure point for his enemies to push on. Because, oh yeah, he has enemies. That lady friend? She’s dangerous in more way than one. She’s in London for some undercover shiz of her own. I won’t give any of it away, but suffice it to say she has some dangerous friends who are more than suspicious of Martian’s cover story of being a former English professor who is now trying to write the great American novel. They not as dumb as everyone else. Though his cover is not quite as flimsy as being a geophysics grad student in a program with a bunch of other people who are actually geophysics experts, but is flimsy nonetheless. Point is, the show spun its wheels at times. There are some cool action set pieces, but there is way too much walking the halls, sitting on a couch and skulking in hotels. It’s a lot. It doesn’t tip into boring, but someone with an itchy trigger finger might fast-forward through the 27th scene of Martian and Samia meeting up. Or maybe the entire storyline about the Iranian thing. It could have used a haircut to six episodes.

Look, if you like spy thrillers, you will probably enjoy this series. It’s intricate and complex enough to hold your interest. It looks pretty good and the acting is decent. It’s the tone that can seem a little beige at times. The volume a little low. I suppose not everything needs to be a crazy Mission Impossible stunt-fest, but not everything needs to be a talky-talky, eight-hour series either. I know this is based on a French series, The Bureau, that some of my podcasters seemingly lost their minds over. So, not everything cool about the show is their original win. But the downside is also not all on them. Or maybe it is. I don’t know — the French can be long-winded and passionate in ways that our American minds can’t comprehend. I imagine the whole love story — which is one of the more dispassionate ones I’ve seen in recent history — is directly ripped from the original. Though Fassbender may be the one you hire to swear undying love and really mean it. Just don’t ask him to show it.