Cancel those weekend plans and plump up the sofa cushions: one of Netflix’s biggest ever hit series is back. By this, I don’t mean Squid Game, the inventive Korean thriller that returned for season two at Christmas. Or Wednesday, the teen-focused Addams Family adaptation due to release its much-anticipated second season later this year. I don’t mean Ryan Murphy’s Monster, either – another streaming phenomenon that recently came back for more. No, I’m talking about The Night Agent, the pulpy spy series that debuted in March 2023 and became the streamer’s sixth-most-viewed series ever. Strangely, amid a sea of constantly replenishing “content”, The Night Agent may turn out to be one of the few shows whose return doesn’t disappoint.
For many TV series, the second go-around – what American pundits sometimes refer to as a “sophomore season” – has proved a difficult nut to crack. The aforementioned Squid Game, for instance, failed to recapture the zeitgeisty buzz of its first season, which cut through pop culture like a thunderbolt during the tail end of the Covid pandemic. So, too, did the juggernaut hit Tiger King when it returned for a redundant season two. This isn’t a problem unique to Netflix, of course – acclaimed shows on traditional networks, such as True Detectives or Yellowjackets, have been completely derailed by an errant season two. But it’s a predicament that Netflix finds itself in particularly often, thanks chiefly to the sheer volume of content being churned out, and the considerable, pressure-inducing audience size for any one hit.
So what makes The Night Agent any different? The series was, in the scheme of Netflix originals, fairly unexceptional. Created by Shawn Ryan, whose Noughties cop show The Shield has endured as one of the finest dramas of TV’s “golden age”, The Night Agent was warmly received by critics, some of whom likened it to the Kiefer Sutherland counterterrorism thriller 24. (A plotline in season one involving an attempt to assassinate the US president certainly encroached on Jack Bauer territory.) But it was also modest in scope, without any real star power. At the heart of the series, playing an out-of-his-depth FBI agent, was Gabriel Basso, the actor best known for his turn as JD Vance in the drama Hillbilly Elegy – not someone you’d describe as a household name. (The Whale’s Hong Chau is the most famous member of the supporting cast.) The Night Agent’s success, then, came as a surprise – especially when you consider the far more expensively produced, A-lister-laden series that have failed to make a mark on the streamer, such as last year’s now-cancelled Kaos. But the truth is, its low-key aspirations have worked in its favour.
While The Night Agent’s second season will inevitably struggle to recreate the fervent buzz of its first, Ryan’s series stands a far better chance than some. The opening episodes immediately deliver much of the same, twisty intrigue that made season one so popular. Everything about the series is utterly unspecial – from the flat, unnuanced dialogue to the limp characterisations – but when it comes to determining what makes a streaming show a hit, quality is seldom the deciding factor. Paramount+’s ongoing spy show The Agency is a far better example of the genre – and boasts a cast of stars, including Michael Fassbender, Jeffrey Wright, Katherine Waterston, and Richard Gere – but it will only be watched by a fraction of The Night Agent’s audience. The mass migration of talent from cinema to TV has meant that the idea of seeing major film stars tackle a (usually mediocre) eight-part streaming series now holds no novelty. The Night Agent taps, in some ways, into TV’s more traditional appeal – the chance to watch a group of unfamiliar faces slog their way through a familiar genre. What’s the worst that could happen?
‘The Night Agent’ is streaming now on Netflix
