The Agency (2024)

Good, smart, propulsive spy thriller.

The more episodes I watched, the more I started to grasp and comprehend the show’s pace and framework and came to appreciate its intentionality. This is a world I want to understand because it feels like I’m watching an intricate puzzle being put together. It’s a unique world I enjoy being in so I’m looking forward to seeing where The Agency goes after a strong start.

I’ve never worked for a foreign intelligence service (I would say that, wouldn’t I?) but it certainly feels authentic and, more importantly, it’s a chilly, complex, utterly engrossing drama that unfolds in unexpected ways.

Paramount+ and Showtime's "The Agency" doesn't have the spy action that fans of "Mission: Impossible" or James Bond may expect, but I found the two episodes sent to press consistently riveting due to the sharp dialogue, incredible ensemble, and tight filmmaking.

Deeply engrossing (in the three episodes made available to critics), the espionage thriller explores the human cost of covert work.

It plays an intricate and involving game of cat and mouse—and presents a layered portrait of espionage as an act of performance—with dispassionate precision.

Only four of the season’s 10 episodes were made available to critics, so this comes with a heavy caveat — a story can start out well enough and then struggle to live up to its ambitions — but I like what I’ve seen so far, with its world of operatives and handlers, of covert glances and back-channel subterfuge, laid out with a seductive urgency that gives a deceptively graceful quality to all this unseemly work.

Fassbender’s mesmerizing performance is the biggest draw here, giving viewers a real taste of what it’s like to love a liar. .... Other story lines for secondary and tertiary characters feel comparatively unmoored. But on the whole, it’s all very slick and overtly, pleasingly fancy-schmancy.

The forbidden relationship between our spy and his paramour is missing the actual chemistry required to undergird so much of what is sure to come in The Agency. .... This would be a totally good show to watch with relatives. It’s smart, it moves, it’s got great people in it. You may need to pause and explain things—like when the show suddenly takes us to Ukraine or Belarus—to your aged uncle. But you’ll enjoy it. And then, when you have a chance for some temps seul, do try Le Bureau.

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.