The Agency 1.1-1.3: Sharp American British Spy Mix

I saw the first three episodes of The Agency on Paramount+Showtime last night.  It's a spy-thriller narrative, with John le Carré feel to it -- that is, a complex story, with several layers of characters, and a central character who, for whatever reason, is operating and living not completely in synch with his/her superiors in the agency.

And The Agency does have this particular twist: the "Agency" is actually our American agency, aka the CIA, in its critically important London bureau.  This affords The Agency the best of both worlds -- the easy rudeness or at least bluntness of Americans, working in the streets, and flats, and eateries of London.  In that mix, The Agency has connections with both the Americans in Sheraton Taylor's Lioness (here's my review of the first season, and I'll be reviewing the second season in the next day or so) and the Brits in Joe Barton's Black Doves and Debora Cahn's The Diplomat.   If this gives you the impression that spy thrillers are very much in the air these days -- or, more precisely, in the stream -- you'd be completely right.

All of these series also have top-notch famous acting, and The Agency is no exception.  Richard Gere plays the bureau chief, Jeffrey Wright is right below him, and Dominic West is right above him as the CIA Director (I'll just note that the first time I saw West in an American role was in The Wire, and his American accent was so good I was surprised to find out he was British).  Michael Fassbender plays the beleaguered  agent-hero, and does a good job of it, as does Jodi Turner-Smith as his girlfriend.

Now, you'll notice I haven't warned you about spoilers, because I don't intend to give you any.  But I will say that The Agency in its first three episodes offers a provocative blend of intellectual puzzling and life-and-death action.   I'll be back here with more when I see more of the series.  In the meantime, I highly recommend it.

Black Doves: Snow White Thriller

There hasn't been a James Bond movie since 2021, but the Brits are serving up some top-notch thriller TV series in the closing months of 2024, with a second season of The Diplomat, the first season of The Day of the Jackal (which I'll review after it concludes in the weeks ahead), and the first season of Black Doves, a six-episode Netflix mini-series which I just finished watching and I'm going to review right here.

First let me say that the review will be spoiler free, hence no usual warning, and I said first season for The Day of the Jackal and Black Doves because both have been renewed for second seasons.

Joe Barton is the creator of Black Doves.  I first encountered his work in the 16-episode Lazarus Project (2020-2023) which was mostly the best time-travel narrative I've ever seen on any screen, so I wasn't surprised that Black Doves is a uniquely memorable thriller.  It takes place during the Christmas season in current London and manages to inject life-and-death into nearly every scene of snowflakes and jingling bells.  And though it has no time travel, it plays off events and people meeting ten years ago in recollections that seamlessly slide in and out of hugs and bullets in 2024.

The Black Doves are an independent spy organization that thinks itself superior to MI-6, the CIA, and any government organization, and probably are.  The highest person we meet in the organization is Mrs. Reed, played by Sarah Lancashire, whom I can't help thinking is on sabbatical as the British Police Sergeant she played so well for so many years on Happy Valley.  Keira Knightley plays Black Dove Helen Webb, happily married to the British Defence Secretary, with two adorable kids, but fully capable of loving someone else passionately at the same time, and adeptly deadly with a gun or a knife.  The other big star, Ben Whishaw (Q in the Daniel Craig Bonds), plays Sam, a flat-out but sensitive assassin, with a long-standing friendship and professional relationship with Helen, called in to help with the dangerously escalating situation at hand.

How's that for no spoilers, right?  But I will say that the twisty plot has lots of surprises, lots of lethal action, leavened with the sarcastic humor we've come to expect and enjoy in these kinds of British thrillers.  I'll 100% be back with a review of the second season, whenever it's up, and kudos to Netflix for putting the first season all up at once just a few days ago.

The Lazarus Project season 1: Time Travel Done Superbly Right

So, a friend in the UK -- James Harris -- who knows how much I enjoy time travel stories (as a reader, a viewer, a reviewer, and an author) recommended The Lazarus Project, and sent me a link to a trailer, for its second season.  I figured before I watched even a trailer for the second season, I might as well watch the first season, which I just did -- and thought it was brilliant -- and then discovered that although the second season debuted in the UK this month, it has not yet made it over to this side of the Atlantic.  Why TV series can't be released at the same time all around the world, I have no idea.  But rather than keep complaining about that, I thought I'd tell you why I not only think the first season of The Lazarus Project (which I binged on TNT) is brilliant, but the best time-travel series I've ever seen on television, bar none.

[And there may be some spoilers ahead, but I'll try to be as general as possible.]

First, the ambience was great, reminiscent of Utopia (the UK version), and its unique mix of gravity and humor, life-and-death situations leavened with nonchalance.  But its the story, and the attention it gives to consequences of time travel, that puts it on the very top.

Here's the set-up, which I'll enumerate to make as clear as possible:

1. There's a time travel process -- not a "machine" per se, but some kind of process, which isn't quite revealed -- that sets time back to 12 midnight, July 1, from whatever time the process is invoked in the subsequent year.  So, if the switch or whatever is flipped right now, our world would go back to 1 July 2023. And we and just about everyone in the world would be doing whatever we were doing on that midnight.

2. Just about everyone in the world has no idea that this, the reversal in time, is happening.  We have no idea we're going through this time a second, third, or who knows how many times.  But a very few people -- mutants -- are aware of this Groundhog syndrome, and a serum has been invented/discovered which opens up the awareness of a few other people to the repetitions in time.

3. Numbers 1 and 2 above are the basis of the Lazarus Project, which seeks to protect the world or least we humans in the world from extinction events.  And the head of the Lazarus Project -- at least as far as we know -- gives the order to invoke the time shift.  

4. But remembering the lost time is a heavy burden, which can become excruciating in all kinds of ways.  A baby born during a year that is later erased won't exist after the rollback.  Imagine how the parents who remember that year -- parents who are in the Lazarus Project -- would feel.   Or, if you lost any loved one during that year, you might well want the time set back as soon as possible, to give you a chance to do something to prevent that death.

5. But the problem is the Lazarus Project also has a principle of setting time back as infrequently as possible, and only to derail mass extinction events.  To give an example that's mentioned early in the narrative -- September 11, 2001 didn't qualify, as terrible as it was.  But COVID did, and the speed with which the vaccines were rolled out in our reality is cleverly explained as due to the Lazarus Project buying more time by literally setting time back, giving microbiologists as much time as they needed to come up with the vaccines.

But ok, I'm coming close to spoiler territory, so I'll just also tell you the acting and production were excellent, and creds to Joe Barton who wrote the narrative. I'll leave you with this recommendation: if you're a fan of time travel, see The Lazarus Project.  Not only will you not be disappointed, you'll be glued to the screen and thrilled.  And the good news is that if you want to see it again, you won't need some kind of switchback in time to do that.

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my latest novel (with a touch of time travel) -- to be published 8 February 2024

"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." 
-- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History
get It's Real Life in paperback, hardcover, or on Kindle here