‘The Agency’ Series Premiere: Michael Fassbender Is Back on Our TVs, and We’re Better for It

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Speaker 4 Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson.

Speaker 2 I am Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 4 Rob has no fewer than 20 separate individual dishes to make for Thanksgiving. So we are...

Speaker 4 Booked and busy this holiday week here in America, but we wanted to pop in to briefly touch on a new show that we are both really enjoying that is called The Agency.

Speaker 4 It is airing on, I don't know, I wrote down Showtime slash Paramount. I don't know exactly how one accesses it.
And that means we're not off to a good start.

Speaker 4 This is some language I copied out of one of the various emails I got.

Speaker 4 The Agency will premiere with two episodes on Friday, November 29th on the Paramount Plus with Showtime Plan, aka Paramount Plus's premium subscription before its on-air debut on the Paramount Plus with Showtime TV channel, formerly called Showtime.

Speaker 4 If you can navigate any of that and find this incredible TV show, you're in for a damn treat. Yes.
So here's what Rob and I are going to do.

Speaker 4 In the little time we have between Rob's busy baking and cooking schedule,

Speaker 4 we wanted to take a few minutes to talk like in a spoiler-free, as if you hadn't seen it way about like why you might want to watch the agency because we're aware that it's it's a show that's not on a ton of people's radar.

Speaker 4 And then after that, we've watched two episodes and we're going to talk about the two episodes that we've seen and sort of our thoughts on that.

Speaker 4 So Rob, bottom line, what is the agency and who is it for?

Speaker 2 The actual agency is the CIA.

Speaker 2 The agency, the show is, it turns out, just an incredible bit of espionage drama. I didn't know, even though I was doing it, Joe, but I have been holding space for the agency.

Speaker 2 I have been waiting for this exact kind of like dense, hyper-tangible spy drama, and it's really speaking to me two episodes in. Like this, this feels like a great execution.
If you are into,

Speaker 2 dare I say, as someone who does not read a lot of fiction, a sort of novel-like treatment.

Speaker 2 And I think overall, the level of detail that can come from

Speaker 2 that sort of storytelling.

Speaker 4 So this is the story of the CIA, a CIA branch in London, the Bureau in London. And we are following a spy played by Michael Fassbender.
Ever heard of him? Who's come back from six years on assignment?

Speaker 4 And he is reacclimating to life at the Bureau. He's pulled out quite hastily and sort of reacclimating to life in London.

Speaker 4 And then we've got a cast of characters at the Bureau itself, at the agency itself, and then,

Speaker 4 you know, some agents who are about to set off on new assignments and stuff like that.

Speaker 4 This show is based on Le Bureau, a very, very, very popular, though I've never seen it, French television show that ran for five seasons, 50 episodes. So this is like, I think

Speaker 4 the reviews I've seen so far are mostly positive. And I think that anyone who has any hesitancy around it is someone who like loves the original French series.

Speaker 4 And so is like, I'm not sure this is going to live up to. one of the best shows I've ever seen.
And so like, sure.

Speaker 4 I loved this show.

Speaker 4 I loved what we watched so far.

Speaker 4 far um the bona fides here beyond michael fastbender is that the like the people working at the agency are people played by like jeffrey wright Richard Gere, ever heard of him?

Speaker 4 John Magaro, one of my very favorite of all favorites guys in things.

Speaker 4 Catherine Watterson, back from her assignment in Slow Horses here again.

Speaker 2 She really got to play the part that she barely got to play in Slow Horses.

Speaker 4 I love what she's doing in this.

Speaker 4 Jodi Turner Smith, who we watched in Bad Monkey recently, is here as Michael Fassbender's sort of love interest, who we met on assignments, who might be more than she appears to be,

Speaker 4 and a bunch of other folks that will get into sort of like the nitty-gritty of the cast list, but this is just like an incredible cast of characters.

Speaker 4 And like Robin and I were talking about this, because this show isn't on a ton of people's radars, there's just like people who will crop up.

Speaker 4 You're just watching it, you're like, I think I know who's in the show. And then Dominic West is here on a Zoom call, and you're like, oh, okay, Hello.

Speaker 4 So that's very exciting. The first two episodes are directed by Joe Wright, a filmmaker who I really love and I want to talk to you about in a second, Rob.

Speaker 4 And then Jez Butterworth and John Henry Butterworth, who are a pair of brothers, are

Speaker 4 two of the most sort of like exciting and acclaimed English playwrights to be doing it these days. So if you're like, how did they get all these people in this show?

Speaker 4 I think it's the bona fides of the original French show,

Speaker 4 the Butterworths as adapters, and then Joe Wright, who is an incredible filmmaker working on these first two episodes.

Speaker 2 And thank goodness that they did, because obviously, because it is a spy show, there is a lot of acting, as you said, across Zoom screens, on phones, like staring at a computer.

Speaker 2 To get this level of talent makes all of that stuff work and makes all of it feel really compelling.

Speaker 2 Like, I think, you know, Fossbender obviously deserves his own sort of Zoom out treatment as we want to talk about the cast.

Speaker 2 But overall, the supporting structure within the agency in the office is often just as compelling as everything that's going on out in the field.

Speaker 4 Every time I notice, is this a workplace comedy when like John McGarrow's character and Catherine Waterson's character, who sort of sit adjacent to each other out in the pool of desks, are like talking about his special lumbar support chair.

Speaker 2 You know, it's like giving office minds or whatever. Apparently the other libureau is the French version of the office.

Speaker 2 There's two shows that are apparently fusing into one here.

Speaker 4 I see, I see, I see.

Speaker 4 So yeah, I mean, I would really, really recommend this. I was talking to our pal, Chris Ryan, about this.
He hasn't watched it yet. And he was like, he was asking me if I liked it.

Speaker 4 I was like, I really like it. I think you, Chris Ryan, are going to lose your marbles for the show.
It feels like it was grown in a lab for Chris and Andy. But like, it's also grown in a lab for us.

Speaker 4 Like,

Speaker 4 I hadn't talked to you before we hopped on this call, but I was like. Rob's going to like this.

Speaker 2 Like, this is

Speaker 4 good shit. It's really good.
And, like,

Speaker 4 what I really like, and this is sort of my last, last, I think, big picture thing to say is that while it has a lot of trappings of the spy genre that you might be familiar with, and there's something, there's like a couple different voiceovers.

Speaker 4 But Foss Bender in episode two, twice in voiceover, says, when you live undercover, there's all these voices, loud voices, quiet voices.

Speaker 2 And I was like, is this the prestige TV version of Burn Notice? I mean, yes, it is.

Speaker 2 When you're a spy. And I was like, I think so.

Speaker 4 Anyway, so it works on like multiple levels, but something that it does, there's like training or exercises or missions going on in multiple countries. Yes.
Inside of just these two episodes.

Speaker 4 It does not assume its audience can't follow along with what's happening.

Speaker 4 You don't need to know everything about the current state of geopolitics in Ukraine or wherever else to follow every single thing that's happening,

Speaker 4 but it's not talking down to, there's not like, there's some exposition, we've got a new care, a new doctor character in the office who's there to ask questions for us if she doesn't understand what's happening, but it's not stopping and giving us massive, massive debrief scenes where they have to overly explain every single thing

Speaker 2 that's going on.

Speaker 4 Anything else, like sort of big picture that you want to say to either convince people to watch this or not?

Speaker 2 I just think it does a tremendous job of, like the best shows do, teaching you how to watch it, what to pay attention to. This is a super complicated show.
There are a lot of characters.

Speaker 2 There are a lot of dense geopolitical dynamics we're trying to parse, figure out how these things are connected, whether they are at all.

Speaker 2 It will not be a good second screen show for you to have like on the background while you're making dinner. It's not going to work if you're doing that.

Speaker 2 But if you are plugged into it, it's already feeling super rewarding, not just in terms of having personal stories within this broader geopolitical landscape, but just the level of spycraft involved and teaching us not just how to watch the show, but to your burn notice point, like how to be a spy, right?

Speaker 2 Like what goes into to see how to make and erase identities, how much latitude these sorts of undercover operators have.

Speaker 2 And we should say that like the main characters in the show out in the field are not primary field agents who are going in, guns a-blazing, mucking shit up.

Speaker 2 They are trying to lurk and learn things and connect dots and bring intelligence together. And if they're involved, things are going wrong.
And guess what?

Speaker 2 Two episodes in, things are already going wrong, but we're already learning what tactics work and what don't.

Speaker 2 And I appreciate, yes, having some of these point of view characters who can be around to ask questions, but we're getting to have our cake and eat it too, as far as a very jargon-y-specific kind of world and show, but one that we can feel invested in, emotionally speaking, and where these characters are, and also clued in enough that I just want to see what's around the next turn and what the next mission is and what the next quirk of all this becomes.

Speaker 4 That's sort of like our big picture. You know, so if you haven't watched yet, you know, peace out of here.
Go, go figure out how to watch it.

Speaker 2 Watch it.

Speaker 4 Come back and listen to us talk about it. And something that this end of the year on the Prestige feed is a little dicey.

Speaker 4 We're not sure exactly what we're covering in terms of, there's just like nothing super obvious for us to cover. So we're sort of like picking and choosing.

Speaker 4 These maybe littler shows that are of interest to us. If you want us to cover something week to week, again, there's only a couple weeks left.

Speaker 4 We're not going to cover like a ton of things week to week, but like,

Speaker 4 if you want us to cover something like the agency week to week, that's up to you.

Speaker 4 That's up to you to listen, to watch the show, to tell everyone else that you know to watch the show and listen to the podcast.

Speaker 4 Because like, if there aren't a ton of ears or eyes on this show, like we don't have like the full latitude to cover it week to week in the way that we might want to, but I think it merits it.

Speaker 4 And I think, I think there are other shows we have covered week to week that don't have as much meat on the bone. So it would be a shame to not get to cover this in more in-depth, but we'll see.

Speaker 4 We'll see what happens.

Speaker 2 I I hope beyond hope. But as you said, the access is what it is in terms of knowing how to even watch the show in the first place.

Speaker 2 Clearly, there's a demographic that's interested in spy programming.

Speaker 2 But even within that, this is maybe more on like the Tinker Taylor Soldier spy end of that spectrum than it is the USA Characters Welcome end of the spectrum.

Speaker 4 And we embrace both. We really do.

Speaker 2 Characters really are welcome here.

Speaker 4 They really are. Okay, I want to talk to you about Joe Wright as a filmmaker.
I have a guess, but do you have a favorite Joe Wright film?

Speaker 2 This is a really hard question. I think if pressed and very relevant to our interest today, I fucking love Hannah.

Speaker 4 I knew it was going to be Hannah.

Speaker 4 I should have just like guessed. I knew it was going to be Hannah.

Speaker 2 You're going to have to rip Atonement from my cold, dead hands, too. Right.
It's like there are a lot of good answers here.

Speaker 4 It's the double Sersch, the Sercher Ronin, double special.

Speaker 4 I love Atonement. That's my favorite, but Hannah is like a real close second.
And I think I sometimes tend to champion Hannah because it is just wildly overlooked.

Speaker 4 Like, I don't understand why more people haven't seen or love Hannah. But I think I was thinking about Hannah a lot when I was watching these two episodes.
The way that he shoots London.

Speaker 4 Like, you know, we are in gray, dreary London and an intentionally contrasting gray, dreary London to the bright, vibrant colors of,

Speaker 4 you know, Michael Fossmann's character's Martian, Martian's, you know, job in Ethiopia. And so I think that like

Speaker 4 that color palette is really pinging Hannah for me.

Speaker 4 And then Fassbunder himself, you know, we very recently, I'm just assuming you watch this because it's kind of exactly your taste as well, I think, but like we really recently watched Fassbunder do sort of spy-esque stuff in The Killer last year and this sort of like silent stoicism.

Speaker 4 This is like a different, this is a different brand of silent stoicism. This isn't like as, I don't know, cold, chilly as I found him in The Killer at all.

Speaker 4 You know, there's scenes with a daughter character, and then there's this idea of like this love, this desire, this thing that could break him of his sort of

Speaker 4 chosen vocation that's all part of this.

Speaker 4 But, you know, I was thinking about the killer, but I was thinking about Hannah and following Sir Sharon's character in Hannah, who is both someone who we understand her feelings and her passions and her anxieties, but who is largely like quiet as she prowls around in these various locations.

Speaker 4 What Joe Rightness do you have in your mind as you're watching this episode? And then like, how is Fastbender in this role working for you?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think prowl is sort of the operative word there.

Speaker 2 Like there is a loneliness that I think he captures really well, but a version of it that feels certainly alienating, that feels, I think, overtly watched in terms of his camera style in a way that suits a show like this where Michael Fassbinder's character is being tailed for basically the entirety of these episodes.

Speaker 2 And there's this overall sense that, you know, the CIA needs to be very wary of every potential enemy combatant, every potential foreign operative, but also its own agents, maybe as much as anybody.

Speaker 2 And so the level of scrutiny and the level of doubt, like that all feels so central to a movie like Hannah in particular and the way that's applied.

Speaker 2 But honestly, to a lot of the interpersonal stuff, even in something like Atonement, even in sort of the more romantic fare that Joe Wright deals with.

Speaker 2 I just think as far as the Hannah comp, both this and that so far really tap into the wounded heart in the spy craft element, right?

Speaker 2 It's this idea of how the personal can compromise you, how it can build you up, how it exposes you to all of these other elements in the room that you have so carefully walled yourself away from.

Speaker 2 And the fact that we're already kind of dipping into that, that was something that, Joe, I don't know what your level of familiarity was with the bureau coming in.

Speaker 2 I knew that it was a revered show, that it was beloved by people who love spy-type properties, that it was maybe on the more dense side. I didn't know that it was going to be this personal so quickly.

Speaker 2 And frankly, I don't even know if it is. Maybe that's straying from the source material here or the inspiration.

Speaker 2 But you see a lot of Eric Banna's character in Hannah in what Fastbender is doing here. And frankly, like, look, he's just an Fastbender is just an incredible agent.

Speaker 2 Like, any agency, any time period, give the man a duffel bag and a badge and like he's going to fucking cook. So I'm a long for all of that.

Speaker 2 And I'm a long for, I think what he brings to a part like this, into a show like this, just as an actor, he always reads as having that kind of three moves ahead competence.

Speaker 2 And you're right that the killer is like a little bit different speed. And it also kind of plays that for laughs at some points because that character is not three moves ahead.

Speaker 2 This one that he's playing here in Martian, I think is in some ways. He's ahead of many of his colleagues.
He's ahead of his tails.

Speaker 2 He's he's kind of showing people the ropes and how to do this job, but he's also blundering his way into a love affair that is clearly compromising his entire life.

Speaker 2 And that's a combination that I want Michael Fassbender to play basically anytime he wants to.

Speaker 4 I love that. I was trying, I was watching this.

Speaker 4 I was thinking about the killer, and I was also thinking about, and I'm sorry to bring House of R into this, but X-Men First Class, one of my favorite, genuinely one of my favorite movies, mostly because Fossbender and McAboy are just so good in that.

Speaker 4 And then like, specifically Fossbender, and I've said this for years, and it's not an original take, but like, the section of that movie where he is traveling around the world, speaking multiple languages so that he can kill Nazis.

Speaker 4 I'm like, why did we not get a million movies of that? Why is that not the movie?

Speaker 2 You know, there was like a whole plane out of the black box.

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 4 Like, that is just the sequence in Argentina when he just killed. I'm like, and so I was like, what is it about Michael Fossbender?

Speaker 4 Thinking about the killer, thinking about X-Men First Class, where i was like i just want to see him as an assassin as an agent as like you know and there's the like continental sort of european aspect of him even though he's playing an american in this in this particular thing but when he starts speaking russian or he starts speaking something else he sounds like so convincing there's also just like a a like a meticulousness to him there's you know like the just the shape of him and then like the the like the way his face is set and the way he carries himself is just so meticulous This is someone who is just so careful with so many things.

Speaker 4 And so to watch someone like that potentially unravel, even though we have not really gotten to the unraveling yet in this show, but the, you know, everyone is quite worried that that is what is about to happen.

Speaker 4 That is what we are being warned of. The right, you know, some, I would say the one moment that I was just sort of, I'm not sure we needed this was at the end of episode one.

Speaker 4 We've already had the Jack White cover of Love is Blindness as the theme song for the the show.

Speaker 2 Do you think that's a little on the nose?

Speaker 4 And then Catherine Waterson's character says, like, the one thing everyone knows about love, it's blind. And I was just like, and then this theme song kicked back in.
I was like,

Speaker 4 okay, we get it. But him, like, in episode two, watching him have this conversation.
I think it was two, maybe the end of one.

Speaker 4 Sorry, it blurred a little, but like him having this conversation with Jodi Turner Smith's character, Sammy, and

Speaker 4 talking about what he wants and knowing what he wants. And there is just this, like, unintentionally cite another Fast Bender movie, this hunger inside of him for that connection.

Speaker 4 And especially in contrast to he's got this sort of camaraderie with his daughter, but there's also tension there of like, she's got some spike, understandable spikiness about feeling like abandoned or not getting to see him.

Speaker 4 So there's like this jokey back and forth, like miming various assassination techniques between them sort of thing. But there's also It is cute.

Speaker 2 Like the blow dart is really cute.

Speaker 4 It was super cute. And also like him waiting with her in the lobby for the elevator and he's like in bare feet and she's just sort of like walking in circles.

Speaker 4 There's just like little moments of that just feel like very intimate. But her getting his daughter getting on the elevator and saying like, I'm glad you're back there.
I said it.

Speaker 4 You know, that's this sort of like bid for intimacy that like hasn't maybe been available to her in their relationship.

Speaker 4 So like while he has this capacity, there is this, yeah, this like hunger, desire for something that he has, and the show tells us you, one has to put in a box and tuck away in order to do the work that they have to do.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so you have the first impression of how Fastbender appears on screen, which, as you said, very meticulous, also like a physical presence, like a very believable spy in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2 Our first introduction to him as a character, though, in the show, Joe, is him covering up the nature of that relationship with Sammy, just lying through his teeth about what happened and the way in which they parted.

Speaker 2 And like, I am, I am kind of obsessed with their correspondences as they appear appear in this show.

Speaker 2 Like, he has this, he has her business card and on the back of it, it says, it was dangerous, it was wrong, it had no future, but I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Speaker 2 That's just good writing. He gets this email from her.
I love you. I'm not over it.
I won't write again. Like, there's some Hemingway shit going on with Sammy that I'm clearly very into.

Speaker 2 And it makes it, look, I just think it's very smart writing in the sense that we're seeing his attention fray already. He's just come back to London.
He's following all the operational standards.

Speaker 2 He's going through the airlock as he comes into the office. He's doing all the stuff he's supposed to do.
He's filling out all the paperwork. Everyone is applauding for him.

Speaker 2 And you can see Martian's attention fraying and splintering off to the TV screen of the news alert that a place where Sammy might be might be in danger.

Speaker 2 And that alone is enough to basically send him into a tailspin. And so to have that.

Speaker 2 version of this character and those events in his life juxtaposed with a much broader story about the way in in which putting the personal first can create real actual risk on a, on a national level in terms of this other, others fraying plot with Coyote and his alcoholism and what was hidden and what was obscured and when and why.

Speaker 2 I just think like they're, they're really setting the stage for something that could be not just layered, but just really powerful and really effective. And I'm waiting to be.

Speaker 2 to be clubbed with this thing over the course of the season.

Speaker 4 Catherine Watterson, who we talked about how much we liked her when we talked about her very quick appearance and slow horses when we were covering that show.

Speaker 4 You and I are trained to pay attention to this character because we know this performer.

Speaker 4 But the way that she's playing, and again, I don't know how much is on the page and how much is the actress's decision and how much is the direction, you know, who decided to do this, but

Speaker 4 the nuance of...

Speaker 4 the way she greeted him on his return, where it's like, this is the first time she's been his handler. They've been talking on Zoom, you know, for years.

Speaker 2 Extremely relatable.

Speaker 4 This is the first time they're meeting in person.

Speaker 4 Just like her flushed, like flustered to see him.

Speaker 4 But also the way her face dramatically changes, the face she presents to him and then the face you see over his shoulder when they're hugging. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I found the little beats that she put into that exchange so revealing of a character who is the mouthpiece of this idea of talking to him in the first place when she's handling him about you you have to let me know if you fall in love because that's a dangerous thing to have happen.

Speaker 2 One of the no-nos, it turns out.

Speaker 4 Right. One of a couple.

Speaker 4 And then when she's training Danny, this young new agent, you know, she has a similar sort of overt, you have to put yourself, you have to be lonely for the rest of your life in order to do this.

Speaker 4 And so it just, we don't even know, we haven't even gone home with her yet.

Speaker 4 We don't even know what her life is like, but I feel like I fully understand who this person is with very little screen time, actual screen time.

Speaker 2 Completely. And I think a really vivid character within what is, by the nature of this world, just such a fascinating dynamic between handler and agent, right?

Speaker 2 It's this, as you say, there is an unbelievable intimacy in that because Naomi has to know everything about Martian, has to know his entire biographical story, has to know exactly where he's been, who he's dealing with, what his circumstances are.

Speaker 2 He is actively putting his life in her hands in a lot of ways. And yet, I don't know if you're an agent in the field, given the nature of that work, that you can ever 100% trust your handler.

Speaker 2 Like you, you believe that they have your best interests at heart so long as those interests align with the agency. And the second that that is no longer true, you will be cut.

Speaker 2 You will be sent like basically packing or defend for yourself.

Speaker 2 And I think you're starting to see that with what Martian imparts to Danny in terms of not letting yourself believe for a second that any of this stuff can protect you.

Speaker 2 Like you have to protect yourself. It doesn't matter who's giving you orders.
It doesn't matter what you think your responsibility is.

Speaker 2 Like you are responsible at the the end of the day for getting yourself out.

Speaker 2 And he's, I think, proven pretty capable of doing that in certain situations, but he clearly can't get his way out of this relationship that he has with Sammy, even as he's becoming more and more aware that she is, as you alluded to, perhaps not what she seems.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I thought that sequence in the, in the lecture hall, when he's like. so afraid he's not going to see her there, but so hopeful that he will see her there.

Speaker 4 Because if she's there, then she is not hiding things from him. Yeah, I thought that was extraordinary.
And I think there are just little moments.

Speaker 4 And again, I don't know what's like lifted, airlifted directly from the French series or whatever, but like they're just little tiny character peaks that, again, we're only two episodes in.

Speaker 4 We have a massive web of characters we're trying to track. And I feel like I understand

Speaker 4 and am invested in all of them. Like for someone like Danny, who we've seen do like one training up, but like even or in like a couple, a couple of training moments.

Speaker 4 And then even just like the very brief moment of her just like running through the city while practicing her like street, like her swearing.

Speaker 2 Street farsing.

Speaker 4 Your street farsing.

Speaker 4 I thought that was just really fun. It was just like a tiny beat in the middle of like a sandwich between two other scenes.
And again, I'm just sort of like, I'm very invested in her.

Speaker 4 Is she going to be okay? I don't know. I think, I think she's wonderful.
And so.

Speaker 2 And you see this initial test that she does in the cafe, too, where Martian assigns her to find out basically the biographical info of these two men who are sitting there having lunch.

Speaker 2 First names, last names, jobs. I can't remember what, what all is on the the little dossier that he wants to collect.

Speaker 2 And she makes the mistake of like putting herself, making herself so noticeable that one of the guys wants to come over and buy her a drink afterwards, like involving herself too much. Right.

Speaker 2 And just in showing us that scene one, again, it just pulls you into the spy craft of this show. It's showing you how much Martian knows from being out in the field.

Speaker 2 It's showing you how much Danny still has to learn about working in the background in this way.

Speaker 2 It also is setting a version of stakes for this op that she's about to go on, where she now needs to basically wiggle herself into an exchange program to be sent to Tehran to investigate nuclear engineers.

Speaker 2 And it's like, now you know, if we see her on screen getting a little too close to something, making herself a little too endearing, that itself is a risk.

Speaker 4 Yes, I love that. And like, I think.

Speaker 4 To your point about this idea of messy human connections and how we see it across the whole story, we've got this side plot with Henry Jeffrey Wright's character and his brother-in-law, who's doing like I don't know extremely hot Doctors Without Borders in the Ukraine except they're on an undercover mission that gets blown and they have to literally like fight off a legion of this was like a wild thing inside of this show that is not getting like a huge push out into the world as far as I can tell.

Speaker 4 There is this gun like gun battle sequence that I think is like some of the best.

Speaker 2 That's really good. It's really good.
It's really quite good.

Speaker 4 Also, I felt the stakes like, you know, often we watch so much, we've watched so many films and so much television.

Speaker 4 And often, when I see a scenario like that, I'm like, well, they're obviously going to survive or they're obviously going to die.

Speaker 4 Like, I feel like I, you know, I know the beats of the story and I'm like, this is what has to happen for whatever to happen next.

Speaker 4 I felt genuine tension in inside of this exchange where I was like, I actually don't know if the story needs them to die or needs them to live. I actually don't know what the answer is here.

Speaker 4 And so I'm genuinely feeling tense. And we know that Jeffrey Wright's character has an emotional investment for sure in whether or not these three people live.

Speaker 4 One of whom is played by Edward Holcroft, who I

Speaker 4 know from the Kingsman film franchise, but also London Spy, another really, really great sort of cerebral spy show from a couple years ago.

Speaker 4 And something that you and I were commenting on is like, I don't know if Edward Holcroft is going to be, I don't know if that character is coming back because he's not in like any of the cast lists that we could find.

Speaker 4 Dominic West shows up on a Zoom and like he's not mentioned much places in association with the show. So, is he here for one episode?

Speaker 4 Alex Jennings, an actor I love, um, who plays the operative who concealed the fact that Coyote had a drinking problem because he himself had a drinking problem.

Speaker 4 Alex Jennings is one of my favorite uh character actors, and when he showed, I was like, Alex Jennings is this, and then he gets fired.

Speaker 4 And I'm one episode in, and I'm like, Well, he's probably not coming back if he's not in the main cast list for the show, but you got Alex Jennings for one episode, and and I like had to pinch myself watching the first episode.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 we are given a scene right away where it's John Megaro, Alex Jennings, and Jeffrey Wright in a room together. And I was like, I'm sorry, what? Yeah.
What am I watching?

Speaker 4 This is extraordinarily high-level stuff. So,

Speaker 4 so yeah, so then that puts me in a position where I don't know who else is going to pop up, you know, for one episode or more in the show. And

Speaker 4 to our point, we were talking about this a little bit with Slow Horses, where their willingness to kill off main characters made it so we we actually felt tension.

Speaker 4 We didn't know who was going to survive or not. I don't know.

Speaker 4 Just because you cast a familiar face to me in an episode in this show, I guess, doesn't mean that person is here for the long term, has any kind of plot armor, anything like that, because I guess everyone said yes to doing this.

Speaker 4 And that's tremendously exciting for me personally.

Speaker 2 As they frankly should. I'm totally with you on the level of production, clearly the level of performance and acting here, the effects work.

Speaker 2 Like that, that shootout scene should have been been the tell that this is a production for television.

Speaker 2 Cause anytime there's a shootout with explosions, the fire effects on TV are notoriously horrible. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I thought these looked really good and it really intensifies a scene in which, yeah, those three like conspicuously hot doctors are fleeing the camp.

Speaker 2 If anything, look, if you're around the world and you're looking at a refugee camp, Doctors Without Borders, whatever, and every doctor is way too hot, they're probably spies. Yeah.

Speaker 2 They're probably undercover.

Speaker 4 That's what I wrote down. I was like, way too hot not to be spies.

Speaker 2 That's what I'm saying. And I think a similar effect is in play with the one exception to your rule about maybe this is the last time we see this character.

Speaker 2 I think we know enough about Jodi Turner Smith to know that the first time she appears is like baggage left in the prologue, that was not going to be the last time we're going to see her.

Speaker 2 She is too good, way too magnetic to be left in the dust in a show like this.

Speaker 2 And thank goodness, because it gives us that layer of intrigue of Martian trying to fix and figure out this basically big mistake he has made in allowing someone who seems to maybe at least be another operative or another asset or another spy of some kind so closely into his orbit all while the agency is trying to figure out everything else around him.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I'm really excited about the role she's playing on this show. I think her chemistry with Fossbender, when they are together, is electric.

Speaker 2 I don't know how often that's going to happen from this point forward or if we're going to get, like, is it going to be the version of Spy versus Spy where they are across a table in a room together or the version where they are increasingly alienated from each other.

Speaker 4 Okay, so I have theory, I have some theory corner around this.

Speaker 4 And again, we don't, we haven't watched Le Bureau, we don't know the plot of this show, but watching them sit across from each other, it's not quite on this level, but it's getting like a little bit of George Cliny and Jennifer Lopez out of sight.

Speaker 4 You know, that like that like stylish, just the way it's lit, the way they're looking at each other.

Speaker 4 It didn't, you know, we weren't cutting back and forth between Hotel Sex and the dinner table, but like it was sort of giving that energy to me.

Speaker 4 And I, I wonder, she mentioned a couple things in that scene. She mentions her husband and she mentions that if she goes back home, uh, she would be stoned for adultery.

Speaker 4 And so I think there's actually a version of this story where she's not another operative, but there's other reasons why she would conceal her true motives for being there. I don't know either way.

Speaker 4 And I, and that's the point. And I think, you know, it's giving, it's, it's like some of my favorite,

Speaker 4 you know, it's, it's like, it's Hitchcock. It's notorious.
It's like sort of like, I am really attracted to you, but can I possibly fucking trust you? Can you possibly fucking trust me?

Speaker 4 And in my line of work, I have been told again and again and again and again, not to trust people.

Speaker 4 Are you the exception? Or am I just being another like dumb asshole, like following my heart? Really juicy, delicious stuff on the table for us here.

Speaker 2 And to your out-of-sight call out there, like, I think what makes that relationship on screen work so well is they are so overtly skeptical of each other and they know that they cannot trust each other.

Speaker 2 The more if

Speaker 2 Sammy is a spy, or at least, or at least knows that the man that she knows is Paul

Speaker 2 has been looking into her and poking around to see if she's legit.

Speaker 2 Like, even that kind of skepticism, even if she is personally just like trying to evade the death penalty, I think just adds a lot of heat and a lot of electricity to their dynamic.

Speaker 2 I can't wait to see them back together to have literally any kind of conversation that they would have on this show.

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Speaker 4 Two other characters I want to talk about that we haven't spent a lot of time talking about. One is, I mean, like, mostly just because of, like, Richard fucking gear is here and, like,

Speaker 4 batting way below what he needs to, like, do. And, you know, like, he's.
Come on.

Speaker 2 Station Chief's a good job.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but in terms of the role he's playing so far on this show, it's like, it's, like, slightly functionary. And, like, he's there to tell us how the system works and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 But like a Turkish bazaar, apparently, is how it works.

Speaker 4 But doing it in such a just charming, magnetic, charismatic way that I'm just like, yeah, this is why you hired Gir to do this. Like, and I'm glad that he won.

Speaker 4 And I don't know if there's like, you know, if his role is going to like bloom into something much bigger and different and more complicated later in the season.

Speaker 4 But, you know, I hope he just took this because he, I don't know, he loves the original show or he loves Joe Wright or he loves the playwrights or whatever, but like just watching him make certain choices as he delivers something that could be like quite dry exposition was really enjoyable for me.

Speaker 2 I think he and Jeffrey Wright both are just making an absolute meal out of that stuff right now.

Speaker 2 It is all the very plain operational conversations that all of a sudden I just want to watch. And if anything, that overall is where the show is really singing so far.

Speaker 2 It takes things that are really bland and really banal. Like Michael Fassbender sweeping an apartment for bugs is just one of the most watchable things you will find on television this year.

Speaker 2 And it doesn't make sense. It shouldn't work, but it works with him.
And giving Richard Gere these lines shouldn't work, but it does with him.

Speaker 4 And then the other character I want to talk about is Dr. Blake.

Speaker 4 This is Harriet Sampson Harris, who that actress I know because I have a Fraser addiction, an unfortunate Fraser addiction, and she is incredible.

Speaker 2 Unfortunately,

Speaker 4 not new Frasier, let's just be very clear. Classic.

Speaker 2 I just think you should own it. If you're, if you're addicted, like, let's talk about it.

Speaker 4 I just love that show so much. Anyway, she's what she's she was always amazing on the show.

Speaker 4 So so whenever she shows up i think about her phraser character but she is here uh not just to ask what a wooden duck is and i'm like thank you because i was gonna have to google it myself if she didn't like i wrote it down like three times and i was like what the is a wooden duck and then she asked and i was like thank you dr blake but also the fear that she instills not just in Fossman's character Martian when he's like bullshit you know she's like I'm here for the like mental health well-being of the office he's just like bullshit and he was just like because he identifies her as a threat because he knows that that he is under psychological turmoil, emotional turmoil.

Speaker 4 And if anyone is going to sniff him out, it might be this,

Speaker 4 you know, psychiatrist who's been working at Langley for a long time.

Speaker 2 Along these lines, Joe, let me ask you right now, we're still trying to figure out what the future of our coverage of this show is going to be. Do you want to create an email address for this show?

Speaker 2 for our dear listeners to write in, to request more, to clamor for more episodes.

Speaker 2 I have to think tip topinthepink at gmail.com is is possibly a contender for that or post-mission disorder at gmail.com. Maybe it's a Joy Division album.

Speaker 2 Personally, I think it sounds a lot more like New Order. Your mileage may vary.
Those are two options I would put before you.

Speaker 4 I think if we're going to pick anything, it should be Tip Top in the Pink. If you want to check if that's available, you let me know.

Speaker 2 Tip TopInthepink at gmail.com has been acquired. Target acquired.
Mission accomplished.

Speaker 2 Please email us about the agency if you're watching it, or if you're just inclined, or if you're curious, or if you're trying to figure out where to watch it, maybe.

Speaker 2 Perhaps we can help you.

Speaker 4 Do we have answers? I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 2 We'll find out.

Speaker 4 In 2025, I would like to make it a goal for us to create at least one blanket email address. I think we should continue

Speaker 4 to do these individual show email addresses because they spark joy for me. But, you know, for ease of use, maybe for some of our listeners, we should have a like, if you can't remember

Speaker 4 grief cardigan or any of our other hits,

Speaker 4 you can always use that one.

Speaker 4 We'll get that together together sometime in the early next year. But yeah, for right now, it is tip topinthepink at gmail.com.
Great stuff.

Speaker 2 Great stuff, Ramahoni.

Speaker 4 Kai, our producer, just messaged us to say John Hamm's nipple rings forever. And I agree.
At the end of the year, we should rank all of our

Speaker 4 individual email addresses. Him identifying her as a threat, him taking her on mission or being asked to take her on mission, and then trying to make her squirm intentionally on that mission.

Speaker 4 And then also, what i loved about that is that when they were doing that i love spycraft i'm like a big alias fan you can go like big and broad with your spycraft if you want to but what i love about this is that like he's not like putting on a weird accent you know like they're they're they're doing this thing where they're talking to this guy's brother it's complicated watch the show but like but that you know they're doing a bit of like

Speaker 4 con job spy crafting there, but it's not like we need to wear hats and like have a massive cover or anything like that. It's like pretty, it's pretty simple, easy, breezy for them.

Speaker 4 And then the other thing I want to flag is that Dr. Blake shares this look with Naomi, Catherine Waterson's character.

Speaker 2 Really, Naomi shares a look with her.

Speaker 4 I was like, I mean,

Speaker 4 this is a loaded, quite loaded, very brief passage of, but like, what is that?

Speaker 4 What do they want to tell us with that? I'm excited to know. What else do you want to? I mean, we have just like a few minutes left in this little zip through this show that we really like.

Speaker 4 What else do you want to make sure that we hit before we go?

Speaker 2 I mean, I think along those lines with the practicality of the spycraft involved involved in this show, you get a sense from any good spy show or any good spy movie of the level of imagination involved in concocting these scenarios.

Speaker 2 Like the mission that Danny is given here and the sort of infiltration that she now has to do to get herself to Iran. Yeah.
Like it's never just picking a lock or swiping a keycard.

Speaker 2 Like you have to devise a way into these circumstances.

Speaker 2 And that's what I'm as eager to see with this show as anything is because these are not field agents, everything has to be the back door all the time.

Speaker 2 And not just then, you have to figure out where the back door is. You have to figure out who can get you into it.

Speaker 2 Like the chain of events required to accomplish literally anything with this level of inconspicuousness is really impressive.

Speaker 2 And I think requires a lot of really inventive writing and a lot of really inventive circumstances. So you get, you know, Danny is now someone who grew up in Seville, but loves the Knicks.

Speaker 2 I am guessing makes her a Jose Caldrone fan personally. We'll see.
You know, I want to see if she named drops. I want to see if she names any guys over the course of this show.
All right.

Speaker 2 She seems like a student.

Speaker 2 And right now, she needs to figure out how to feign like fake, like scientific credentials in order to get involved in engineering credentials, to get involved in this exchange program in the first place.

Speaker 2 But to pass my muster, Joe, I think she has to at least drop a couple nicks.

Speaker 4 Okay. Well, I'm really hoping she passes the Mahoney test.
And on the like sort of Rob Joe core,

Speaker 4 the Mahoney Robinson verse note, I want to make sure before we go that we shout out that our guy Tom Von Lawler, who is in Say Nothing, and also, let us not forget, Ebony Ma from the Avengers movies.

Speaker 2 You will not let us forget.

Speaker 4 I shall not. I got a bunch of emails from people.
Well, some emails and tweets and stuff from people ask me to watch this Irish show Love Hate, which people have been telling me to watch for years.

Speaker 4 Maybe I'll get to it over the holiday, but that's apparently a Tom von Lawler special. Anyway, he's here playing like a queue of sorts, would you say,

Speaker 4 in

Speaker 4 the agency here? And then

Speaker 4 last but not least, we should mention because it's a big thing. Episode two ends.
We see Fast Bender Martian in a hospital bed with a swollen face.

Speaker 2 Jacked up.

Speaker 4 And says, if you hope, and that's like a preview of a tantalizing breadcrumb of something to come. We don't know how that happened.
He's sort of narrating this from the future.

Speaker 4 Who knows who he's talking to? But he says, if you hope anything ever at any time, it's too late.

Speaker 4 Jack White kicks back in Love is Blindness and we're out and we'll be back hopefully with episode three.

Speaker 2 You know what? The Love is Blindness cover, it is extremely as on the nose as it gets, given the line delivery at the end of episode one, as you mentioned. It also just rips.
Oh, it does.

Speaker 2 I'm not mad about it.

Speaker 4 I love the Great Gatsby soundtrack.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. I mean, one of, one of the true stars from that soundtrack, as it turns out.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But to tie some of these ideas together, too, like the, the quiet voices, loud voices in your head as an undercover agent speech that Martian gives. I mean, we're also getting that in the score too.

Speaker 2 And I think the score of the show is really phenomenal.

Speaker 2 You're getting these like loud droning synths and sometimes this sort of like very pensive piano music and sometimes both at once in a way that I think works really, really well.

Speaker 2 And I think the style and the construction of this show, very easy to gloss over because I'm just trying to figure out what's going on and who is involved with whom and who's playing whom.

Speaker 2 But we're just operating on all levels here.

Speaker 4 It is a very high-level show. We hope you can find it.
We hope you can watch it.

Speaker 4 We hope we get to cover more of it, but we will see.

Speaker 4 We're not making any promises, but we do have an email. tiptopinthepink at gmail.com if you have thoughts.

Speaker 4 If you love the original French, no spoilers for us, please.

Speaker 4 We don't know the story, but if you love the French version, want to talk to us about it, let us know.

Speaker 4 Thanks to Kai Grady, who is cramming pods like nobody's business here in the few days before the holiday

Speaker 4 and is back home in Texas. Shout out to the Grady Homestead.
and thanks to Justin Sales for his work on the feed in general. We'll be back.

Speaker 4 We're going to be in person in LA next week, Rob. We've got some crossover events planned across various RingerPods.

Speaker 4 And we're going to be doing some like Hall of Fame stuff. We've got some fun end of your plan.
So stay tuned and we will see you, listen to you, talk to you, talk at you soon. Bye.