This article is taken from the June 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

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I reviewed Matthew Quirk’s thriller The Night Agent for the Financial Times when it came out a couple of years ago and enjoyed it immensely. It’s an intelligent, fast-paced conspiracy tale based in Washington DC. Quirk, a former reporter at the Atlantic magazine, certainly knows his way around the dark side of the American military-industrial complex. Too often adaptations lose something when they are dramatised for film or television — but not this time.

The book’s plotline, adjusted for television, focuses on a deep-state conspiracy at the very highest levels of the White House

The series, now showing on Netflix, is a cracking drama that engages from the first. The Night Agent is Peter Sutherland, a low-ranking FBI officer who spends his nights sitting in a basement of the White House, manning a telephone in case somebody calls. It’s a dull life until, one night, the telephone rings. On the other end of the line is a terrified Rose Larkin, whose aunt and uncle have just been murdered by a very nasty duo — who are now on Rose’s trail.

Gabriel Basso is splendid as Sutherland, a nicely-balanced mix of brain and brawn, who can not only punch his way out of difficulty but also think smartly under extreme pressure. Rose, engagingly played by Luciane Buchanan is also brave, resilient and ready to break all the rules. And Rose has an extra skill-set: she’s an expert hacker, always useful for penetrating official databases — especially when you are on the run from your own government.

The book’s plotline, adjusted for television, focuses on a deep-state conspiracy at the very highest levels of the White House. It’s cleverly drawn, with staged terrorist atrocities and false-flag operations designed to serve a very sinister agenda. As anyone who has visited or worked in Washington D.C. knows, it’s a mostly dull place, but here even the most banal settings, from office corridors to suburban streets, suddenly radiate menace.

Meanwhile the two creepy, psychotic assassins are still on Sutherland’s and Rose’s trail. Adrenaline, they say, can be a powerful aphrodisiac, and so it proves here with the protagonists, as they flee and fight for their lives. There is minimal mutual attraction at the start — instead the writers and director handle the slow-burn romance between Sutherland and Rose with a confident, steady hand.

Ten episodes are perhaps slightly too much of a good thing, but there were enough twists and turns, deftly choreographed action and high-level White House treachery to keep me hooked.

Moving from the local to the global brings us to Citadel. Amazon has thrown around $300 million at its new international spy series, an incredible sum. This super-sleek, high-end hokum is quite entertaining, if only because it’s so derivative that fans of the genre will enjoy totting up the series’s cultural reference points.
Citadel is an international espionage agency that has always been doing good behind the scenes — until it was brought down by Manticore, the bad guys, who are a sort of twenty-first century Spectre with added CGI. Citadel’s top agents Mason Kane and Nadia Sinh are believed to be dead, after being ambushed on a train in the Italian alps by Manticore agents.

The comic-book fight scenes are fast and sharp and there is nice crackle of sexual tension between them

The train crashed but fast-forward eight years and both are still alive, struggling to work out who they are because, like Jason Bourne, their brains have been wiped. When Kane’s wife discovers his past, she actually says, “You can’t remember to put the toilet seat up and now you are Jason Bourne?” Give that writer a gold star for chutzpah, if nothing else.

Kane is played by Richard Madden and Sinh by the Indian actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas. They do a decent enough job, considering the limitations of the script and premise. The comic-book fight scenes are fast and sharp and there is nice crackle of sexual tension between them.

Best of all is their boss Orlick, played with understated menace and a dash of wit by Stanley Tucci, who calls Kane and Sinh back into action. Orlick is supposedly one of the good guys but has no compunction about executing his trussed-up prisoners one by one. But still, I kept thinking, $300 million for this?

Finally, to Belfast for Blue Lights. This gritty six-part cop series, which follows a handful of new recruits in a front line response unit, is BBC drama at its best.

Katherine Devlin is outstanding as Annie Conlon and Siân Brooke is captivating as Grace Ellis. Hannah McLean brings depth and nuance to her role as Jen Robinson, a privileged rookie who initially seems shallow and annoying, but when tested to the extremes comes through with courage.

The series, made by Two Cities Television and Belfast-based Gallagher Films, feels completely authentic. Policing in Belfast is unlike elsewhere in the UK. Poverty, deprivation, brutal criminal gangs can be found across the country but here they are interwoven into the Troubles.

The sectarian divide remains — police vehicles are still pelted with stones, bottles and sometimes worse. The scenes when a teenage drug-dealer obediently walks out of his parents’ house to be knee-capped are utterly haunting.

Meanwhile arrogant MI5 operatives are running their own show, oblivious to how they interfere with the police’s day-to-day attempts to keep law and order. This is smart, captivating drama created by a highly accomplished team — do watch it.