CIA officer ‘Martian’ (Fassbender) is ordered to abandon his undercover life and return to London Station. A past love unexpectedly reappears, putting his mission and his real identity against his heart, hurling them both into a deadly game of international intrigue and espionage. Based on the critically-acclaimed French series Le Bureau des Légendes – hailed as one of the greatest spy TV series of all time by global critics, The Agency is adapted by brothers Jez (MobLand) and John-Henry Butterworth (Edge of Tomorrow). The series marks Fasssbender’s return to the small screen for the first time since 2008’s The Devil’s Mistress and bears more than a passing resemblance to another American adaptation of an international spy series, Claire Danes’ Emmy-winning Homeland.
The series stars several other heavy hitters, including Jeffrey Wright, fresh from an Oscar nomination for American Fiction, Jodie Turner-Smith (The Acolyte) and Katherine Waterstone (Fantastic Beasts). Writing for Indiewire, Ben Travers calls The Agency “Stylish and solidly built... genre-fare elevated by its impressive cast and polished presentation”. He continues: “When we first meet Fassbender’s lead character, he’s being debriefed by Naomi (Katherine Waterston), his London-based handler, after a six-year mission in Eastern Africa. “How did it go?” Naomi says. “How do you think it went?” he replies, giving away Martian’s defining trait right off the bat: resentment. He resents the job, with all its secrets and lies, and he resents what it’s done to him — most recently, what it’s taken from him.” He’s been forced to leave behind the woman he considers to be the love of his life, Sami (Turner-Smit) – who, along with being an academic and advocate, may also be a spy.
