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

 I’ve been spoilt by streaming. Netflix and Amazon Prime upload whole series at once. I don’t necessarily want to binge-watch everything in one go, but I do like having the show on tap. 

The BBC doesn’t do this. Happy Valley, the gripping crime drama set in Yorkshire, was released every week and each episode became a national talking point. Liaison, Apple TV’s new spy series, was also streamed weekly. I diligently watched all six episodes before giving you my verdict. 

It’s a thumbs up, albeit measured. Liaison is Apple TV’s first Anglo-French production. I do love a drama with a good mix of conspiracies, geopolitics and espionage and here Liaison delivers. The show’s creator, Virginie Brac, was a writer on Spiral, the superb French cop show that had a small legion of devoted British fans. 

Like Spiral, Liaison moves at a cracking pace, but across a much larger arena, taking in the Syrian civil war, Paris, Brussels and London where big, cynical beasts prowl the corridors of power. 

The sparkling cast makes for easy viewing

The sparkling cast makes for easy viewing: Eva Green, first made famous as Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, plays Alison Rowdy, a British official; Vincent Cassel is Gabriel Delage, a shadowy French operative and the always magnificent Laëtitia Eïdo, best known for her role as a Palestinian doctor in Fauda, plays Sabine Louseau, a Eurocrat who knows too much for her own good.

Liaison is what we in the trade call “high-concept”, with big themes. So big the storylines sometimes seem to collide: a Syrian hacker is on the run with his wife and baby after he downloaded top secret information, an evil Euro-corporation is waging cyber-warfare on Britain’s infrastructure, the French intelligence service is wrangling with an off-the-books unit, the evil Corporation has a mole inside the British government — all intertwined with a reanimated decades-old hot mess romance between Alison and Gabriel. 

It’s always a tricky call balancing the big picture with the smaller-scale human drama of the characters. The Bureau, the superb series about the DGSE, the French foreign intelligence service, did this with style, intelligence and restraint. 

It’s the latter quality that’s missing here: Liaison is always entertaining but sometimes feels a bit chaotic, with so much going on it was sometimes hard to remember what was happening as each episode was released. The super-evil villains seem to have wandered off the set of an Austin Powers film, but even so, it’s all very swish and glamorous, with lush sets and plenty of action, especially in the climactic finale. The sexual tension between Alison and Gabriel is so strong they seem about to tear each other’s clothes off at the most unlikely times. Do they ever? Watch it and see. 

El Candidato, on Amazon Prime, is a real find. This ten-part narco spy-thriller features Mexican actress Eréndira Ibarra as Isabel Alfaro, a rookie CIA agent in Mexico City, and James Purefoy as Wayne Addison, a once-legendary CIA officer, now lonely, bitter and cynical. 

There is no sexual tension here between the two leads as they pursue Rafael Bautista, a sinister cartel leader. Addison is rude, arrogant and dismissive of Isabel — but she’s focused and brave as their mission takes them to some dark places. Created by Peter Blake, a former writer on Billions, the series lacks the glamour — and budget — of Liaison but perhaps that is a boon. The writing is more finely crafted and accomplished, showing the sordid side of espionage as the episodes unfold in dingy back rooms and shadowy alleys. 

Slowly, inevitably, Isabel gains her boss’s respect and their relationship changes as she evolves from irritant to ally. The storyline also steadily digs deep into the two CIA agents’ own histories and the compromises they have made on the way — not least when Isabel realises that her former boyfriend, now the mayor of Mexico City, is rather less clean than he claims and may be entangled with Bautista. 

There is little glamour in Isabel’s work: her job is to gain people’s trust and use them for her own ends. Which she does — even if the results are catastrophic. This is a smart, nuanced series that deserves a much wider audience. 

Finally, a brief mention for The Wrong Side of the Tracks (Entrevias in Spanish), an engaging, sometimes touching crime series on Netflix. José Coronado is magnificent as Tirso Abantos, a Spanish army veteran who runs a hardware store in Entrevias, a run-down neighbourhood of Madrid. 

Tirso is the grumpiest man in the world, abandoned by his wife, almost estranged from his family, watching angrily as drug dealers, criminals and rapacious property developers move in. When his adopted, troubled teenage granddaughter, Irene, finely played by Nono Sobo, gets entangled with the local mafia, Tirso quickly takes matters into his own hands. 

His and Irene’s growing love for each other is movingly portrayed. The two eight-episode seasons are confident enough to keep the same cast: cops corrupt and honest; Tirso’s ferociously loyal army buddies; his hapless son and ruthless daughter. 

Meanwhile Gladys, a fiery Colombian immigrant, is trying to keep her son Nelson away from the gangs and in the arms of Irene, his true love — while her own feelings for Tirso steadily grow. If only life were that simple.