The Agency follows covert CIA agent Martian (Michael Fassbender), who is ordered to abandon his undercover life in Africa and return to London Station. As he navigates the complexities of his mission, a past love reappears, pitting his professional duties against his personal desires.

The Agency (S1:E1-9) Review

In a letter written to Helen Keller in 1903, Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) stated, “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn, and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely, but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”

While Clemens was broadly speaking about creativity, many believe it is a fundamental truth that underlies all narrative works of fiction. After all, for centuries, academics have claimed that Shakespeare explored every major theme in the human condition. If this is true, then all we are left with now to sate our thirst for originality is a well-thought-out and expertly delivered twist on one of these themes. The Agency gives us just that—for four episodes.

From the moment James Bond seduced Sylvia Trench with a game of Baccarat in 1963’s Dr. No to the oppressive realism of 2006’s The Lives of Others, tales of espionage have been among the most frequently mined genres. This is understandable, as no other style so naturally lends itself to dramatic shifts.

This is all to soften the blow and help you keep things in perspective when I say that The Agency doesn’t add anything new to the seedy underworld of fictional spy thrillers. Anyone who has been a fan of the genre has seen every single story beat that the show offers in one program or another. What does set it apart from many of its contemporaries is that, for almost its entire first half, it is nearly flawlessly executed.

Directors Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice) and Philip Martin (The Crown), who are responsible for the initial quartet, deliver a symphonically-paced story with rich yet economic dialogue delivered by masterclass performances full of pregnant meaning and subtext. Michael Fassbender and crew deliver such nuance and depth of feeling as to compare to Joaquin Phoenix in the first Joker.

Each episode’s attention to detail and expositional restraint are perfect. As you soak it all in, you will be entranced and marvel at how good cinema can be.

It’s crushingly awful that the subsequent episodes are merely above average. Once Daytime Emmy Award-winning director Zetna Fuentes briefly takes the helm, the showrunners seem to lose focus and begin spending much too much time on the least original and least interesting subplots. Unsympathetic tertiary characters are artificially raised to prominence, and the main narrative is all but forgotten for the next two episodes.

One of The Agency’s biggest missteps was giving Fassbender’s love interest a husband and never showing him. Perhaps he was an evil man who manipulated and forced his wife to be with him, but all we see is that she is cheating on this man, a man who, against all the traditions of his country, allows his wife to become a very prominent and outspoken opposition leader. It robs both Fassbender and her of much sympathy, making it difficult to care about a relationship that consumes the series’ focus by the end.

While the program never dulls, and the performances from its core cast are more than sufficient to carry you through to the end, it’s doubtful that the season finale will be enough to recapture the glory of those initial episodes.

The Agency (S1: Finale) Review

As expected, the show’s early divergence from its A plot in lieu of an unremarkable love story and a completely uninteresting C plot robbed so much momentum from the program that its ending didn’t have any of the intended emotional oomph.

It’s still a decent program, but I’m not certain that it’s worth watching it until season two comes out and we see if the series has any legs.