On Screen: “The Agency”
The Agency
Combine CIA secrets with undercover espionage and toss in some big-name studs and you should have an intriguing new spy series, right? Unfortunately with “The Agency,” it doesn’t add up.
Using the code name Martian, Michael Fassbender plays a world-weary CIA field agent abruptly summoned from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to his London base after six years of undercover work, leaving behind his lover, activist Sami Zahir (Jodie Turner-Smith).
After Martian connects with his Zoom handler Naomi (Katherine Waterson), he’s passed along to Henry (Jeffrey Wright), who tells him the Cold War is back, and the British station chief Bosko (Richard Gere) who answers only to Langley.
There’s a definite hierarchy here.
“There are 170,000 words in the English language,” declares Bosko. “Each year 2,000 of them become obsolete; they enter the great verbal bathtub of our collective being. Presently circling around that open drain are these words: stoicism, fortitude, duty, honor, sacrifice.”
Who talks like that?
Not Danny (Saura Lightfoot-Leon), a new recruit on her first assignment. “There’s a cost for doing this work,” she’s told. “A price. Are you sure you want to pay it?”
Meanwhile, a CIA asset called Coyote has disappeared in Belarus and, because he’s a reformed alcoholic, he may have been tortured and forced to drink liquor which would cause him to spill confidential information during an interrogation.
More complications arise when Dr. Rachel Blake (Harriet Sansom Harris) arrives from Langley “to evaluate mental health across the department.”
That’s understandable since everyone seems disgruntled. Martian soon discovers that his flat has been bugged, and he resents that he’s being tailed as he copes with his teenage daughter, Poppy (India Fowler). Plus, Sami arrives in London.
Debuting on Nov. 29 with the first three of 10 episodes, it’s a remake of the French series “Le Bureau des Legendes” (“The Bureau”) that’s been adapted by brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth and produced by George Clooney and Grant Heslov.
Inexplicably underwritten and slow-paced, it’s punctuated with predictably chaotic car chases in and out of a shadowy garage, tires skidding.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Agency” is a clichéd, stagnant, frustrating 4, streaming on Paramount/Showtime.
Susan Granger is a product of Hollywood. Her natural father, S. Sylvan Simon, was a director and producer at M.G.M. and Columbia Pictures. Her adoptive father, Armand Deutsch, produced movies at M.G.M.
As a child, Susan appeared in movies with Abbott & Costello, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Margaret O’Brien, and Lassie. She attended Mills College in California, studying journalism with Pierre Salinger, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism.
During her adult life, Susan has been on radio and television as an anchorwoman and movie and drama critic, syndicating her reviews and articles around the world, including Video Librarian. She has appeared on American Movie Classics and Turner Classic Movies. In 2017, her book 150 Timeless Movies was published by Hannacroix Creek Books. Her website is www.susangranger.com.