Michael Fassbender in Showtime’s spy thriller

Let’s create a tableau illustrating a grand unifying theory of the London-based spy shows that premiered this fall/winter.

In our picture, the CIA team from the London station, led by the cast of The agencyIn the foreground he works as Eidra Park, Ali Ahn’s CIA station chief The diplomatIn the background he is having a professionally irresponsible love affair with Stuart from Ato Essandoh.

Further down the Thames, at MI6 headquarters, Lashana Lynch’s Bianca attempts to track down the Jackal (Eddie Redmayne), a methodical assassin not unlike Michael Fassbender’s 2023 character The murdererwho himself resembles Fassbender’s character The agency. The latter lives his own semi-monastic life in a flat in Barbican, which means he’s almost literally opposite MI5’s Slough House, the haven of bumbling, flatulent ghosts Slow horses.

It’s a little trickier to explain where Keira Knightley’s character from the upcoming Netflix series is Black pigeons does their espionage. But all I know is that it’s Charles (Ted Danson), the septuagenarian mole from Netflix A man insideIf he wants to continue his adventures in the second season, he should take to heart the paraphrased words of Samuel Johnson: If you get tired of London spy shows, you get tired of life.

I love London and enjoy spy dramas, so the current saturation doesn’t bother me at all. However, it absolutely values ​​series that know what they are from the start and go about their business with a certain clarity – even if it’s something like this slow horses, where disorder is business.

The agencypremiering on the platform mess that is Paramount+ with Showtime, has a lot to offer. The cast, led by Fassbender, Jeffrey Wright and Richard Gere, brims with erudite professionalism, and the scripts by Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth occasionally complement their intelligence. The first parts were directed by Joe Wright, the series looks great and sometimes builds tension.

What it doesn’t have, at least in the first few episodes, is much consistency. Each of the three chapters sent to critics has different characteristics and different points of frustration, which in turn lead to an overall frustration. It’s entirely possible that these elements will fit together seamlessly by the end of the first season, or that what feels like disjointedness will turn out to be versatility. At the moment, however, it’s difficult to get used to the show despite its potential.

Fassbender plays a man initially known only as “Martian.” Martian, a secret agent, has spent six years in Ethiopia when he is suddenly pulled from the field and sent back to London, forcing him to abandon the married woman (Jodi Turner-Smith’s Sami) he is sleeping with. Was it an affair? The job? Or was he in love?

In London, Martian has to get used to a “normal” life that is actually not like that at all. His apartment is bugged. Everywhere he goes he is tailed by agents. He has a teenage daughter (India Fowler’s Poppy) who has rather mixed feelings about his long period of abandonment.

It’s not entirely clear why Martian was ripped out or why he’s back. But his expertise comes in handy because a secret agent in Ukraine has gone missing and no one is sure if he’s been taken out or turned around – causing all sorts of consternation from the station chief (Geres Bradley), his deputy (Wright’s Henry) and the agent’s superiors in Past and Present (Ambreen Razias Blair and John Magaros Owen). Meanwhile, Martian is asked to help train Daniela (Saura Lightfoot-Leon), a new agent about to be sent to Iran.

The arrival of Dr. Rachel Blake (Harriet Sansom Harris) complicates everything. She was sent over from Langley to assess general mental health, although Martian assumes she is actually there to check on him.

You know the plaque/apron/throw pillow that says, “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps?” The agency Is You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps: the series.

The most interesting part of The agency is based on the idea that it’s impossible to get out of what the Martian went through without losing your mind. In fact, it’s probably not possible to get the job done at all. It’s a frightening thought – global stability depends on the careful maintenance of a network of unstable people – that might have been even more provocative a decade ago, when the French drama was behind it The Bureau of Legends premiered. But at this moment, when the public leadership of more than a few nuclear powers is in the hands of people of questionable stability, it may feel more strange than timely.

It’s made even stranger by the fact that the third part of The agency halts all narrative momentum to allow its characters to present the thematic subtext of each conversation at every moment, at a level of exposition I’ve rarely experienced before. Given the Butterworths’ theatrical roots, some of the hand-holding is exceptional, including a prime scene where Fassbender and Harris face off.

At the same time, the episode ends with two characters following a performance of Catch-22. The reference only serves as a nod to viewers who remember that the title refers to Joseph Heller’s mystery, in which any character who claims to be insane in order to avoid dangerous missions must be sane, but only a crazy person (sorry for the outdated ability thinking) could carry out these missions. It is noteworthy that Heller’s book is a dark comedy whose recent Hulu adaptation contained very little of that humor – and that adaptation was produced by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, who are also producers The agencywho doesn’t find much humor in his central issue. I think this is a Catch-2024.

Fassbender, looking as distraught and haunted as Michael Fassbender can possibly be, brings some irony to Martian’s dissolving sense of his own identity. In general, though, there’s too much at stake for humor. This brings me back to how these first two episodes differ both from each other and from the expositionally awkward third episode.

The premiere, which lasts a full hour, is slow but full of intrigue. Although the storyline surrounding the asset in Ukraine begins with an exciting chase, Joe Wright focuses more on the disorientation of these people trying to find the signal in an absolute cacophony of noise. He constantly fills the frame with more information than you can process, forcing both the audience and the characters to figure out what matters.

In this respect, television viewing and espionage are the same, as shown in a scene in which Martian meets intern Daniela in a bar and immediately questions her for details about the civilians she passed – a sequence that is comically related to one moment in the pilot film is identical A man inside.

In the first chapter you learn almost nothing about the characters other than Martian, but you have to observe how the characters talk, how they interact, how they dress, and where they are positioned in the office. The actors are left with a lot of work to do with very little written material. But when you have actors as good as Wright, Magaro, Harris and, most importantly and very subtly, Gere, the effect is exactly the one you want: you get a feel for a workplace without the need for a tour of the workplace.

The cast is so great that when Dominic West appears in a few scenes over Zoom, you just ask, “Sure, why not?” The cast is so great that I mostly ignored how many scenes British actors use mediocre American accents , either to list things or to correct British slang.

In contrast to the meticulously staged first episode, the second episode is chaotic. A single mission related to the Ukraine issue, in turn, tells you about the actors and characters through their behavior under pressure. I really like the idea! There’s torture and interrogations and… it turns out I didn’t focus on any of the things I liked about the first episode. But it did so breathlessly. I just didn’t care.

That’s how it is The agency the show from the first episode? The show from the second episode? Or the show from the third episode? Is it a show that can combine all of these facets, having shown that it can master mood, pace and theme, but only separately? Is it a show that cares about relationships? About psychology? About the process? Here too, the ability to deal with these things in parts, but not to connect them with each other, was demonstrated. What’s good here has given the series some patience. What is unformed and awkward here makes this patience finite.