Michael Fasssbender spy thriller on Paramount+

In the spy thriller The Agency, Michael Fassbender plays a CIA officer working undercover when he is suddenly exfiltrated and called back to the London train station. Nobody tells him why. And his reacclimation process comes with its own complications. The series is a beautifully shot meditation on the psychological toll of concealing one’s identity. The series also stars Richard Gere and Jeffrey Wright as men higher up the chain of command, and Jodie Turner-Smith as the lover he left behind who mysteriously – accidentally? – appears in London shortly after his return.

Fassbenger’s character is called Martian. Is that his real name or an ironic code name that hints at the extraterrestrial reality of this existence? The CIA has housed him in a stylish high-rise apartment that overlooks the eternally gray skyline. But before he settles in, he puts a record on the record player and begins to diligently search his new accommodation for listening devices. It is a wordless and elegantly tense sequence. At one point, the camera takes a close-up shot of Martian’s eyeball as he stares through a shelf. Even at home, he is watched and followed wherever he goes by the very government that employs him. It was for his own good, he was told. Standard protocol in the first few months after a case worker returns. This proves unpleasant for Martian, who is hiding some secrets, including his reunion with the lover he met under his former identity. Is she really who she says she is? Turner-Smith delivers a sophisticated and understated performance that suggests the answer could go either way.

Was Martian being played or is he just paranoid? What does it mean to constantly side-eye everyone around you? A psychologist (Harriet Sansom Harris) has been called into the office to see how he’s doing, but he resists her efforts at every turn.

Created by brothers Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth, the show (streaming on Paramount+) is based on the French series “The Bureau.” Only four of the season’s ten episodes have been released to critics, so there’s a big caveat here – a story can start well enough and then struggle to live up to its ambitions – but I like what I’ve seen so far in its world the agents and handlers, the hidden looks and the deceit, portrayed seductively urgency This gives all this unseemly work a deceptively graceful quality. Can the series sustain this calm, tasteful drive across 10 episodes?

Martian is opaque out of necessity and perhaps personal inclination – he’s methodical and robotic and deeply uninteresting – but Fassbender never allows us to see behind the mask, making Martian a somewhat inert character amid the demanding work at hand. Disaster looms in Belarus, where a CIA agent is arrested for drunk driving. Will he blow his cover? This sets in motion the plotting and strategizing of Martian and his bosses, played by Gere (steadfast, pinched, corporate) and Wright (the smartest guy in the room, trying to save Martian from self-destruction). They calmly watch a video of an interrogation in which a man is being tortured and try to find out whether he is a double agent. He’s nothing more than a specimen they’re watching. It’s all so emotionless and sick. This is a far less heroic vision of the CIA than that presented in the jingoistic “Jack Ryan,” but it’s not exactly critical either.

There is another mission that worries them and is “of the utmost sensitivity – the capture of these agents would constitute an immediate strategic geopolitical catastrophe.” The fact that Gere delivers this sentence with a serious expression is nothing short of remarkable. What these secret agents want to accomplish is kept vague, which is probably the right storytelling choice; it suggests that everything they do has value (rather than the opposite, which seems more likely).

Martian’s views and motives are equally unclear. When he pulls out his cock for a sexual rendezvous, Wright’s character finds him anyway and he offers relentless reprimands. “People come back damaged after being undercover for so long,” he says. “Can’t sleep. Flashbacks. Some go completely crazy. That’s why we have protocols – for example, we follow you.”

“This is not national security, it is a personal matter,” Martian said.

“It is the agency, Nothing is personal,” he said.

Everyone is hiding something. Nothing stays hidden for long. This dissonance is underscored by a number of compelling cinematic choices in the first episode. The US embassy where they are based is full of glass-walled offices that hide so much despite the apparent transparency. But in the end it all comes out.

“The Agency” – 3 stars (of 4)

Where to see: Paramount+

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.