Just binged Treason on Netflix -- if you can call watching five episodes in a row really binging. It's a top-notch MI6 British spy story, right up there with the very best of them.
Every important character has unpredictable twists and turns in their story, including the killing of a very major character, which I'll tell you more about after I alert you to spoilers below. You'll be on the edge of your seat just about every minute, in a story that rips through London town just about as fast as you can keep track of. And the political variables, including the role of Russia and poisons its agents so frequently administer, are pitched just right. But--
[Ok, here's the alert about spoilers ... ]
There were two things I didn't much care for in the narrative. One was a death -- the one of the very major character -- that needn't have been -- and the other was a death that should have occurred, at least in my humble opinion.
Adam -- as of course you know if you've already seen the limited series -- is the death that wasn't needed. He could have been badly wounded, and laid up in the hospital, and that would have had the same effect of motivating his wife Maddy to go all out at the end. It's true the pimest movers in the story are women, but that point could still have been made with Adam surviving.
And the woman who shot Adam dead -- CIA agent Dede -- should have been killed after her murderous act, by either Maddy, who had the greatest motivation, since Dede was her friend and Maddy loved her husband and Dede knew it -- or Kara, who as a seasoned Russian agent must have known better than to leave Dede alive and ever dangerous. Although Dede won't exactly have a happy time of it, and her career may well be ruined with the downfall of Sir Martin, she deserved a more definitive fate.
But, hey, that's just me, and in addition to most of the narrative being so good, the acting was great, including Ciarán Hinds as Sir Martin (always rewarding to see him on the screen), Oona Chaplin as Maddy (same as Ciarán Hinds), and Olga Kurylenko as Kara (the only other time I've seen her was as a Bond girl in A Quantum of Solace, where she was memorable, too). Charlie Cox also put in a fine performance as Adam, and a shout-out to Beau Gadsdon as Adam and Maddy's daughter Ella.
All of which adds up to: see Treason, you won't be disappointed.
The single most important line in Game of Thrones 5.1 is spoken by Daenerys, when she tells us she cannot control her dragons. That one statement sets up all that will follow - or puts all that will follow in jeopardy. If she could control her dragons, then her winning over everything other than the supernatural north would be assured. But if she cannot control them ... well, then anything, including a Lannister victory, and certainly a Stannis victory, is well within the realm of possibility.
