‘The Agency’ Review: Michael Fassbender’s Slick Spy Series About How Much It Sucks to Be a Spy
The song “Love Is Blindness” was first released 33 years ago as the twelfth track on U2’s hit album, “Achtung Baby.” Since then, it’s been covered a number of times by various artists, from Cassandra Wilson on her 1995 record “New Moon Daughter” to Jacquie Lee on the fifth season of NBC’s reality-competition show, “The Voice.” But for a certain generation of cinephiles, “Love Is Blindness” will always be a Jack White song, forever associated with one of the great movie soundtracks, “The Great Gatsby: Music from Baz Luhrmann’s Film.” Sure, White only wrote it as part of a U2 tribute album — which isn’t even the first tribute album to feature a cover of the song — but the second the drums kick in with that familiar beat, it’s impossible not to picture Leonardo DiCaprio’s bright yellow Rolls Royce hurtling across the slippery streets of West Egg.
So imagine the schism in my brain when that same drumbeat started up during the opening credits of “The Agency,” and it was Michael Fassbender’s anxious expression I saw instead of Leo’s. Time is funny that way. One second, it’s November 2024 and I’m sitting down to watch Showtime’s latest spy thriller, and the next, I’m shot back to May 2013 courtesy of a voice crooning, “Love is blindess, I don’t want to see / Won’t you wrap the night around me?” Of course, in May 2013, Showtime was airing a spy thriller — another spy thriller, a different spy thriller, this one a little Emmy winner by the name of “Homeland.”
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Maybe you remember it? It stars Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison, a tenacious CIA officer who grows increasingly convinced that the man she loves isn’t who he seems. Is he a secret agent out to destroy America, or is she just paranoid because her job requires her to be suspicious of everything, even the people she loves?
Thankfully (in a certain sense), “The Agency” brings this bout of nostalgic time-travel full circle, since Fassbender stars as Martian (his code name and only given title), a tenacious CIA officer who grows increasingly convinced that the woman he loves isn’t who she seems. Is she a secret agent out to destroy America, or is he just paranoid because his job requires him to be suspicious of everything, even the people he loves?
As you can likely tell, “The Agency” doesn’t quite break the mold when it comes to serialized espionage stories — it’s even a remake of the popular French series, “Le Bureau des Légendes,” much like “Homeland” is a remake of the popular Israeli series, “Prisoners of War” — but your enjoyment of TV’s latest glimpse inside American intelligence operations abroad may come down to how comfortable you are with recycled material. Stylish and solidly built, “The Agency” is genre-fare elevated by its impressive cast and polished presentation. If you don’t mind a committed cover song — and aren’t too attached to whatever echoes from the past this version brings up — then you might just get hooked all over again.
Hooked enough, anyway. When we first meet Fassbender’s lead character, he’s being debriefed by Naomi (Katherine Waterston), his London-based handler, after a six-year mission in Eastern Africa. “How did it go?” Naomi says. “How do you think it went?” he replies, giving away Martian’s defining trait right off the bat: resentment. He resents the job, with all its secrets and lies, and he resents what it’s done to him — most recently, what it’s taken from him. While making connections in Sudan and Ethiopia for more than half a decade, “Paul” (his alias) just so happened to fall in love. Sami (Jodie Turner-Smith) is a teacher and an advocate. She’s the one holding the megaphone at protests, rallying support for the oppressed, and she’s the one at the front of the classroom, educating the next generation of college students about defending human rights.
Unfortunately, she may also be a spy. While details of her background are left vague (after four episodes, I couldn’t spoil anything about her identity if I wanted to), Martian’s radar can’t stop pinging. First, when he’s being questioned by Naomi, he instinctually lies about his break up with Sami. To his colleague, he says he treated Sami with cold, sudden remove, sparking a big fight that ended with her saying she never wanted to see him again. But via flashbacks, we see that “Paul” was nice to Sami. She knew their relationship would never last (in part, because she’s married and adultery is punishable under the law). Sami even thanks “Paul” for not telling her he was leaving sooner, so she had less time to think about their separation.
Clearly, their love remains strong — a fact emphasized further when, after settling back into the CIA’s London station, Martian skirts his security detail to sneak a phone call to Sami, only to discover she’s in London, too. Huh! What a coincidence! From there, the relationship only gets more complicated, as “Paul” works to conceal his romance from his colleagues (who, lest we forget, are professional spies) while keeping Sami in the dark about who he really is and what he really does. (She thinks he’s a teacher who’s writing a book.)
Meanwhile, at the titular agency, a crisis is unfolding. An undercover intelligence officer, codename Coyote, has gone AWOL. He knows too much about a slew of top-secret operations, meaning if he’s defected, agents lives could be at risk. If he’s been killed, who did it? Why did they do it? And where’s the body? Martian’s office-mates are on edge, from his old pal Henry Ogletree (Jeffrey Wright), who tells him the Cold War is “back” and “chilly as fuck,” to the British station chief, Bosko (Richard Gere), who mainly likes to yell at people during meetings.
Might the Martian’s personal predicament be mixed up with his team’s professional plight? Could the agency be to blame for more than they’re willing to let on — more, even, than Martian already blames them for? Is there an even bigger twist looming in the 10-episode first season? Beyond these initially compelling yet hardly original mysteries, “The Agency’s” somewhat distinctive hook actually rests with Martian’s self-aware dissatisfaction. His job has already cost him six years away from his only daughter. Presumably, it’s at least partially responsible for whatever fallout happened with her mother (who has yet to appear). And now it’s threatening to keep him from Sami, a woman he loves unreservedly. Even if they can find a way to be together, his persistent suspicions, brought on by a life where death could be lurking around every corner, may even spoil the love he once considered pure.
His love for her may blind him to the responsibilities of his job, just like the responsibilities of his job may blind any vision of a life outside of the agency. Oh, wait — now I get why they used that song!
If all this sounds too cliched to you, dear readers, then it’s unlikely “The Agency” will win you over. The cast does try, though, with Fassbender leveling his unyielding gaze on yet another role driven by intense, near-constant solemnity. Wright helps break up his scene partner’s grave disposition by stirring a few chuckles between war buddies, just as he does his damnedest to liven up on-the-nose lines like, “This is the agency — nothing is personal.” Gere, thus far, is angry, just as Turner-Smith is largely defensive and/or worried, but both characters have room to grow and established actors to grow them. Toss in the welcome voices of John Magaro (“Past Lives”), Waterston, and Harriet Sansom Harris, and the cast alone may be able to buy their show enough time to get its hooks in you.
Joe Wright, who directs the first two episodes, is a long way from his adventurous early work in “Atonement,” “Hanna,” and “Anna Karenina,” settling for a thriller’s familiar blue-metal color palette that’s cast over settings as cold and sparse as their inhabitants’ interpersonal lives. But the precise appreciation of seemingly innocuous details and meticulous unfurling of each mystery still make “The Agency” an inviting new addition to the spy genre. You may have heard this tune before, but if a song has a strong melody, it’s typically worth hearing again. Here’s hoping this one plays well to the end.
Grade: B-
“The Agency” premieres Friday, November 29 on Paramount+ with Showtime. Two episodes will be released at once, then one episode weekly through the finale.
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