Looking through the reviews here, I see a whole lot of high numbers and gushing praise, but having just finished the sole season of this overdone pageant of cliches I really don't get all the acclaim.
First off, this would have been fabulous as a feature film, but gets bogged down with too little momentum and hardly any story line at all for the first ten episodes. I kept thinking each time the opening credits rolled, maybe this time we will finally start to see what this is about. No such luck until nearly the end, and by then so many tells had been carelessly slipped through the script that the final three episodes really came off as predictable, anticlimactic and even a little silly.
Secondly, this is by no means the first time a film or series has been top-heavy with high-powered cast and dazzling production values but still failed to disguise how boring and underwhelming the whole production really is. JB Dale was certainly compelling even though his character was never really given any dimension to make Will Travers, Analyst much more than kind of tedious to endure; Jessica Collins as the hopelessly out-of-the-loop 'assistant' who kept barging in on classified meetings offering coffee and whatnot but never seemed to know what her job really was, much less did we ever see her actually doing one; and while I have always been a fan of Arliss Howard, this portrayal of a smirky, murky, passive-aggressive, tokenly gay spymaster was an implausible strain to endure at best, and through no lack of skill on his part trying to pull it off; Miranda Richardson is gorgeous, poignant and sadly endearing from the very first scene and throughout, but after a while one sees that this is pure artistry on her part as an actress because her character hardly has any dialogue and hardly adds anything to, you guessed it, a story that isn't one most of the way through.....
Third, there are a plethora of loose ends, undeveloped plot tangents, unresolved relationships and needless sideshows. Sadly, most of these are hung like so much dead weight around the character of Maggie, who even though valiantly and even passionately played by Jessica Collins, ends up being such a distraction (why is this nice pretty lady even in this thing, and as what? Alienated nervous single mommy, pretty face at the office, spy for the boss, erstwhile love interest that never materializes, yada-yada) while we wait for the story to finally arrive, that I wonder if she didn't get it that her role was mostly being used as a time-consuming but easy-on-the-eye filler to get this thing through thirteen episodes.
And fourth, as I mentioned, all the cinematic artistry in the world cannot hide the fact that we are asked to spend hours and hours taking an expensive high-end big-name production at its word that finally, at long last, the last three or four episodes might actually deliver us a story to follow. When it finally arrives, it kinda doesn't really work all that well, mostly because the most interesting thing from the preceding hours and hours of story-free spy-routine had been all the little tip-offs that made the actual story itself mostly look like a hasty copy-paste of some Tom Clancy wannabe novel, and neither surprising nor climactic in the least.
Fifth, as spy-story scriptwriting goes, this is as lazy and sloppy as it gets. Breakthrough clues saving the day out of thin air, rooms full of PhDs making the most reckless wild guesses on the thinnest of evidence, constant interagency-rivalry jabs at other intel outfits lacking substance or credibility or relevance, a honeytrapping perfect-woman planted neighbor of no significance whatsoever to the non-story who from her first lines is obviously not what she says she is....
I really did enjoy this for what it does have to offer: excellent casting, lush Big Apple cinematography, a sophisticated but not intrusive musical score, great sets, some very likeable and well-played background roles... but if you want a great spy thriller, keep looking. This shows all the signs of maybe, finally deciding to be one, and then never manages to. Not surprising at all that it didn't last past its first year.
First off, this would have been fabulous as a feature film, but gets bogged down with too little momentum and hardly any story line at all for the first ten episodes. I kept thinking each time the opening credits rolled, maybe this time we will finally start to see what this is about. No such luck until nearly the end, and by then so many tells had been carelessly slipped through the script that the final three episodes really came off as predictable, anticlimactic and even a little silly.
Secondly, this is by no means the first time a film or series has been top-heavy with high-powered cast and dazzling production values but still failed to disguise how boring and underwhelming the whole production really is. JB Dale was certainly compelling even though his character was never really given any dimension to make Will Travers, Analyst much more than kind of tedious to endure; Jessica Collins as the hopelessly out-of-the-loop 'assistant' who kept barging in on classified meetings offering coffee and whatnot but never seemed to know what her job really was, much less did we ever see her actually doing one; and while I have always been a fan of Arliss Howard, this portrayal of a smirky, murky, passive-aggressive, tokenly gay spymaster was an implausible strain to endure at best, and through no lack of skill on his part trying to pull it off; Miranda Richardson is gorgeous, poignant and sadly endearing from the very first scene and throughout, but after a while one sees that this is pure artistry on her part as an actress because her character hardly has any dialogue and hardly adds anything to, you guessed it, a story that isn't one most of the way through.....
Third, there are a plethora of loose ends, undeveloped plot tangents, unresolved relationships and needless sideshows. Sadly, most of these are hung like so much dead weight around the character of Maggie, who even though valiantly and even passionately played by Jessica Collins, ends up being such a distraction (why is this nice pretty lady even in this thing, and as what? Alienated nervous single mommy, pretty face at the office, spy for the boss, erstwhile love interest that never materializes, yada-yada) while we wait for the story to finally arrive, that I wonder if she didn't get it that her role was mostly being used as a time-consuming but easy-on-the-eye filler to get this thing through thirteen episodes.
And fourth, as I mentioned, all the cinematic artistry in the world cannot hide the fact that we are asked to spend hours and hours taking an expensive high-end big-name production at its word that finally, at long last, the last three or four episodes might actually deliver us a story to follow. When it finally arrives, it kinda doesn't really work all that well, mostly because the most interesting thing from the preceding hours and hours of story-free spy-routine had been all the little tip-offs that made the actual story itself mostly look like a hasty copy-paste of some Tom Clancy wannabe novel, and neither surprising nor climactic in the least.
Fifth, as spy-story scriptwriting goes, this is as lazy and sloppy as it gets. Breakthrough clues saving the day out of thin air, rooms full of PhDs making the most reckless wild guesses on the thinnest of evidence, constant interagency-rivalry jabs at other intel outfits lacking substance or credibility or relevance, a honeytrapping perfect-woman planted neighbor of no significance whatsoever to the non-story who from her first lines is obviously not what she says she is....
I really did enjoy this for what it does have to offer: excellent casting, lush Big Apple cinematography, a sophisticated but not intrusive musical score, great sets, some very likeable and well-played background roles... but if you want a great spy thriller, keep looking. This shows all the signs of maybe, finally deciding to be one, and then never manages to. Not surprising at all that it didn't last past its first year.