TV Shows #34 - Part 1

The Night Agent Season One (2023)
Developed By: Shawn Ryan
Starring: Gabriel Basso, Luciane Buchanan, Hong Chau, Fola Evans-Akingbola, D. B. Woodside, Sarah Desjardins, Eve Harlow, Phoenix Raei, Robert Patrick, Enrique Murciano, Kari Matchett

Certificate: 15 Running Time: 45-56 Minutes per Episode (approx), 10 Episodes

Tagline: "Heroes aren't born. They answer the call."

I've watched a lot of films and shows like this over the years. I would call them spy dramas but they don't always involve actual spies. They do always involve government agencies though - the 'three letter' agencies, as some like to say - and usually some conspiracy or other, mostly the work of some terrorists and often also a 'inside man' or corrupt member of one of these agencies. Most examples feature real agencies like the FBI, CIA, MI5/6, etc, but there are a few that make up their own, and this new 'Netflix Original' show features the latest - Night Action. Seems a bit of a weird name, don't you think? It sounds like the name of a swingers club or something. Hmm, anyway... I think it's meant to be a super secret branch of the FBI but it seems to operate much more like the CIA. Either way, it's so secret that other agencies don't even know it exists. That must make things tricky.

Their field agents (i.e. the heroes who save the world from evildoers) are known as Night Agents, but oddly, they barely feature in this show. The focus is instead on Peter Sutherland Jr (Basso) who is about as low as it's possible to be in Night Action rankings. He just sits in a basement room in the White House manning a Night Action phone that 'never rings', apparently. If it were to ring, it would be one of the Night Agents for whom it's like an emergency help number if they're in trouble.

Peter and Rose investigate stuff...

Sounds like quite a responsibility, so I guess it's lucky for Peter that it never rings. !!BUT THEN!! Wouldn't you know it? It only rings, doesn't it! Calling it is a panicking woman called Rose (Buchanan) who says her aunt and uncle have just been killed and that the killers are now looking for her too, just to 'tie up loose ends' and all that, I guess. With Peter's help she's able to get away and is then placed under his protection when it seems as though there may be a mole in the government and they don't know who they can trust. Peter has two bosses - Hawkins (Patrick), his FBI boss, and Diane Farr (Chau), the current White House chief of staff - so the traitor could be in either camp. Hawkins doesn't like Peter much, but that would be a bit too obvious, right? Farr seems to like him more, or she at least recognised his potential when he thwarted a terrorist bombing the previous year, which is how he wound up working for Night Action (snigger) to start with.

The fact that those persistent hitmen never seem to be far behind Peter and Rose would seem to indicate that someone is feeding them information, though. We actually spend more time with them than you might think, too, as we see the chase from both perspectives to some extent. They are a couple called (or at least using the names) Dale (Raei) and Ellen (Harlow) and both are pros so I guess neither of them is quite all there but Ellen is the more psychopathic of the two, but she also apparently wants to settle down with Dale and start a family and all that.

Dale and Ellen hunting down their prey...

There are discussions like this and we even see the two of them playing house for a while. I'm not sure why so much time is spent with them. Is it an attempt to humanise them? I guess that type of thing is trendy these days but they are still killers, or 'murdering bastards' to quote Bill from out of Kill Bill. Meanwhile, the whole time Peter and Rose are trying to stay one step ahead of the two lunatics while investigating the apparent conspiracy that put them in harms way to begin with, there's another plot afoot involving the vice president's ridiculous daughter, Maddie (Desjardins), and Chelsea (Evans-Akingbola), the Secret Service agent in charge of her protection detail. Chelsea is ambitious and takes her job very seriously so she doesn't take too kindly to suddenly being saddled with a new member for her team.

This turns out to be Erik (Woodside - Wayne Palmer from 24), a veteran agent only just returning to duty after taking a bullet for the last president, but Chelsea is soon glad to have him around as the idiotic Maddie goes and gets herself kidnapped, and it isn't too much longer before it starts looking like this might have some connection to Rose's auntie and uncle getting whacked, and Peter and Rose's resultant adventures.

Chelsea and Erik investigate stuff...

Like many similar shows and films of recent years The Night Agent is based on a novel, so you can count on these plot threads being tied together in a reasonably satisfying way, and thankfully the stakes prove to be much higher than just Rose and Maddie's lives. Not that they aren't important, of course. Buchanan as Rose, a cybersecurity entrepreneur, is particularly appealing, and the scenes featuring her and Peter as they do running and investigating are the most enjoyable for me. Though well played by Desjardins, Maddie is more of a pain in the arse, even if her father, Vice President Redfield (Christopher Shyer), gives her good reason to be, but I still didn't want to see her riddled with bullet holes or worse.

Basso probably impresses the most though. I haven't seen him since he was one of the kids in Super 8 but he's pretty believable as a makeshift spy/field agent, and his Peter doesn't have an easy go of it since being burdened by the legacy of an infamous traitor for a father. He's determined to make the Sutherland name respectable again though, and Basso's performance makes you hope he does. Despite a few bumps in the road, he and his busty new friend make a good team too. I also rather enjoyed Hong Chau as the White House chief of staff, even if her hair freaks me out a bit.

It's a likeable, top quality cast generally, and a surprisingly engaging story they lead us through. Terrorist plots and government conspiracies aren't anything we haven't seen a million times before on our screens, especially in recent years, but the details are nicely drip-fed to the characters here as well as to us viewers, and it all comes together in a satisfying manner. Maybe some aspects are a little far-fetched - aren't they always with stuff like this? - but everyone likes to see an underdog exceed expectations. It would be easy to dismiss The Night Agent as just another FBI/CIA-type show, and I would understand that, but I thoroughly enjoyed it to the extent that I found myself periodically checking Netflix for season two (which finally aired this past January). It might not be that original but it's slick and definitely enjoyable and addictive enough to be well worth your time.

RKS Score: 8/10