There are certain expectations for a spy series: a sexy leading man or woman, thrilling action setpieces, conspiracies that go all the way to the top, perhaps the threat of nuclear warfare. It’s the kind of escapist storytelling regularly headlined by ultra-cool movie stars like Tom Cruise, Daniel Craig, or, indeed, by Michael Fassbender. So when The Agency opens on Fassbender’s covert CIA operative returning home after a six-year deep undercover mission, only to meticulously search through his apartment to destroy the bugs planted everywhere, you may think, “Oh yeah, I’m in for the coolest sh*t ever.” But The Agency, an upcoming 10-episode series on Showtime executive produced by Fassbender and George Clooney, is doing something much more interesting than the typical spy stuff.
The Agency adapts the 2015 French spy series Le Bureau des Legendes, which was based on real accounts by former spies and inspired by contemporary events. The U.S. remake takes a similarly grounded approach by depicting not just the glamorous double lives of the CIA’s deep undercover agents, but the decidedly unglamorous work lives of their handlers and bosses. The result is a sophisticated new spy series that is equal turns thoughtful and thrilling — willing to give as much time to its characters’ crumbling psyches as it does to hot-button political issues and international crises. It’s refreshing to see such a smart spy series try to make sense of our complicated world... especially as reality falls short of expectations.
Fassbender stars in The Agency as “Martian,” a deep-cover CIA agent who is abruptly pulled from his assignment for unknown reasons. This doesn’t give him any time to break things off with Samia Zahir, a married professor with whom he was having an affair. But when Samia shows up in London where Martian is based, they rekindle their affair, much to the chagrin of Martian’s bosses. That includes Henry (a perpetually beleaguered Jeffrey Wright), Martian’s mentor and the CIA director of operations, and London Station Chief Bosko (Richard Gere), who both seem to be taking a special interest in Martian’s activities since his return. Meanwhile, Martian’s former handler Naomi (Katherine Waterston) has been tasked with training a fresh-faced new recruit Danny (Saura Lightfoot-Leon), as the rest of the agency scramble to deal with a potential rogue undercover operative.
The Agency starts slowly and methodically, its first episode (one of three that critics received of the 10-episode series) more of a mood piece than a thrill-ride. It feels of a piece with Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: careful, deliberate, never too quick to show its hand; more interested in letting us feel part of this world before pulling the rug from under us. And under the direction of Atonement and Cyrano director Joe Wright, it unfolds beautifully. Wright finds the perfect surrogate in Fassbender, whose stoic countenance and handsomely craggy features make him the ideal spy, so much so that you start to wonder if he’s played this character before. And the aforementioned opening sequence — in which Martian arrives at his empty London flat and begins to dismantle the various wires and listening devices piece by piece, feels straight out of Fassbender’s recent film, David Fincher’s The Killer. Whether it’s The Killer’s troubled assassin or The Agency’s troubled CIA agent, Fassbender excels in this kind of complex internalized performance paired with a gruff exterior, and under Wright’s camera — which manages to cloak London in a shadowy beauty — he’s never been more compelling.
Fassbender is matched in talent and depth by the astonishingly star-studded cast of The Agency. Jeffrey Wright lends gravitas to a character who is ultimately CIA middle management, offering a fascinatingly mundane perspective of the enigmatic Agency. Gere impresses as the hard-nosed boss of the London Station with his own agenda, while Waterston and John Magaro give us a glimpse at the reality of being office drones at the CIA. While Turner-Smith gets the most “femme fatale”-like character with her mysterious and alluring Samia, even her performance doesn’t feel like it’s in danger of becoming cliché — she, like the The Agency itself, flirts with the tropes of the spy genre but never falls back on them.
The Agency immediately introduces several interweaving storylines, some of which may be connected, some maybe not. And, unlike the more reserved French series, The Agency is not above delivering some action-packed thrills, with a subplot following undercover operatives in Ukraine that suddenly go missing. The complexity of the various storylines could tip the show over into confusing, but the power of the cast’s performances and the show’s interest in diving into the characters’ various psyches with the introduction of a behavioral psychologist Dr. Blake (Harriet Sansom Harris), propels The Agency through its more knotty plot twists. It’s a more intelligent spy series for an intelligent audience — if they can keep up.
Of course, the great irony is that by presenting itself as such a deeply intelligent take on the spy series, that The Agency ends up feeling even more like wish fulfillment thanks to the deeply dumb political landscape we live in. (It’s hard to imagine the upcoming administration giving the kind of thought or resources to any of the missions that take place in The Agency.) The series might ultimately be better than we deserve, but at least we have it.
