The Agency

Streaming on: Paramount+

Episodes viewed: 2 of 10

It's hard to imagine anything more intense than working undercover for the CIA in a hostile environment, losing years of your life to a secret identity that could be blown at any minute. Except — imagine trying to follow up one of the most critically-acclaimed French shows ever made with a new version, just four years after the original ended. That's the demand placed on The Agency, an American remake of Le Bureau des Legendes, with Michael Fassbender as “Martian”, a covert agent who returns home after spending a huge chunk of time away from everyone he knows and loves.

Inevitably, Martian is soon caught up in a new mission that's complicated by the reemergence of Sami (Jodie Turner-Smith), the woman he fell for in his other life. Getting sucked back into all the chaos is not the return that "Martian" envisioned. Unfortunately, the same can also be said for Fassbender's return to TV as a lead, 23 years after he started out in Steven Spielberg's Band of Brothers. This is hardly a show short on top-tier talent, with Fassbender and Turner-Smith joined by A-listers like Jeffrey Wright, Katherine Waterston and the legendary Richard Gere, plus George Clooney producing and Joe Wright directing. Yet even with that impressive lineup, the first two episodes disappoint.

There's an interesting idea here about struggling to live in the skin of another and how easy it is to lose yourself in work, but what the show ends up losing is our interest instead. Glimpses of humanity, especially in the romance and Martian's relationship with his daughter, are lost in the shuffle — and that's a problem. Just because Fassbender's protagonist struggles emotionally doesn't mean he should be so detached from us as well. The resulting lack of balance between Martian's personal and professional life is surprising because you'd think that a show starring a double agent would have a better grasp on juggling two conflicting worlds at once.