The Agency: Central Intelligence season 1

The Agency: Central Intelligence is Paramount's new espionage series on their streaming service Paramount+ which boasts a top-tier cast and is an adaptation of the French TV series, The Bureau. Being a fan of the spy genre and still waiting for the next James Bond film, the trailer really caught my interest and I was very excited to see what this would be all about. The first few episodes would be directed by Joe Wright while George Clooney and the leading man, Michael Fassbender, were producing this. Sign me up! 

Set around the CIA's office in London, we see Fassbender's agent Brandon return from having worked undercover in Africa for six years where he became romantically entangled with a professor who had been working closely with. Sadly he had to put this past life behind him but he had hopes of reconnecting with his daughter in London but his past cover quickly comes back to haunt him.

The first couple of episodes for The Agency start very strong as he see Brandon readapt to his personal and professional life at the CIA, new agents being recruited for work in Iran, tension over ongoing missions in Ukraine and spies getting caught in the crossfire. The setup was great and it was interesting to see a show about the CIA like this but then the show's momentum stalls and became bogged down in the middle.

I started this series in late 2024 but come episode four and I was starting get a sense of the show going around in circles. The drama that had once hooked me in became stale and repetitive. The show wants to see how agents' personal lives can conflict with their work but I soon lost interest in the personal drama as these relationships were never that interesting to begin with and so I gradually fell off this series to the point of forgetting all about it. Momentum is key to keeping an audience invested and I can see the show has its fans but when over half the series felt like padding, I found myself struggling to care. 

The final episode does reignite some of the earlier action and tension but I can't say this series is an easy one to recommend. With a few odd exceptions, the show is incredibly self-serious but missing that sense of urgency and engagement to keep the audience invested from start to finish so I reckon many viewers never saw the final hurdle even though a second season has been greenlit. A fitting replacement to Homeland this is not but I will see where the shows next in the hope it might improve.