In 'The Agency,' Spy Work Is Deadly... Deadly Dull

You have to hand it to The Agency. It must have taken a lot of effort to make a series starring Michael Fassbender, Jeffrey Wright, Jodie Turner-Smith, Richard Gere, and executive produced by George Clooney this boring.

Based on the French drama Le Bureau des Legendes, this ten-episode Showtime on Paramount+ series follows Martian (Fassbender), an undercover CIA agent who is unceremoniously and without warning ordered to leave his assignment in Ethiopia and return to London. His sudden departure means he must abruptly end his relationship with Samia (Turner-Smith), a Professor of Social Anthropology.

“I went for a spineless, dash of a pathetic, sprinkle of selfish,” he tells his handler Naomi (Katherine Waterson) of their breakup. “She got angry, yelled, the usual bullshit breakup scene, only a touch more brutal.”  Except we see a completely different scene than the one Martian is describing. Samia is melancholy but not angry. “It was dangerous. It was wrong. It had no future. But I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” she says of their relationship. Samia is married, and it becomes increasingly clear that Martian cannot let on to anyone how deeply he still cares for Samia. Things become more complicated when she suddenly appears in London under the auspice of being a guest lecturer. Is she a professor, or has she been working with Martian, who she knows as Paul, as an asset? Or is something else entirely going on?