I vaguely remember season one of The Agency, and that only came after getting pretty deep into season two. I started getting little flashbacks to the first season. Listen, these are things that just happen when you watch as much content as I do. Hours upon hours of TV and film kind of molds and melts things together, and you end up really remembering the best of everything and the worst of everything. But that stuff in the middle can get kind of muddled. I think that’s where The Agency landed for me in its first season, somewhere in the middle. Even though I didn’t officially review it, I certainly wouldn’t have told anybody not to watch it had someone asked. It has a fantastic cast, led by Academy Award nominees Michael Fassbender and Jeffrey Wright, as well as a man who should have been nominated for an Academy Award by now and whose absence is an egregious oversight, Richard Gere. Throw in Jodie Turner-Smith, John Magaro, Katherine Waterston, Harriet Sansom Harris, and a few other familiar faces, and there’s a lot of talent floating around this show.

The Agency is from 101 Studios, which Taylor Sheridan co-founded, and Sheridan serves as an executive producer on the series. So while he doesn’t write or direct The Agency, his fingerprints are on it from a production standpoint. Interestingly, of all the programs associated with Sheridan and 101 Studios, this feels the least like a Taylor Sheridan production. Not that that’s a good or bad thing. He just has a certain style to how his series play out, and The Agency feels largely void of the typical Taylor Sheridan tropes. It’s a tight espionage thriller with a compromised agent at its center. We follow Michael Fassbender’s Brandon “Martian” Colby, who, at the end of last season, became compromised after someone he cares about, Dr. Samia Zahir (Jodie Turner-Smith), was put in harm’s way. He ends up trying to maintain dueling allegiances while also being a somewhat absent parent attempting to reconnect with his young adult daughter, Poppy (India Fowler). The main room inside the CIA’s London office is referred to as the Chicken Coop, where much of the cast floats in and out between handlers and field agents. The office is run by James “Bosko” Bradley (Richard Gere), with Henry Ogletree (Jeffrey Wright) underneath him. They also have an in-house psychologist, Dr. Rachel Blake (Harriet Sansom Harris), who is able to analyze, as best she can, truth from fiction and whether or not somebody is ready for the task at hand.

The season tracks several different plotlines and weaves them interestingly together, so it’s hard to describe the show in a spoiler-free manner. But I shall attempt. Aside from Martian’s increasingly complicated allegiances, we primarily follow agent Daniela “Danny” Morata (Saura Lightfoot-Leon), codename Gremlin. Her assignment takes her deep undercover in Iran, where she is embedded at a university as an international student. She has an initial target, but as things get more complicated, she’s ordered to try to work two targets at once, eventually having to follow the second target because there’s a stronger chance that the new target will elicit a greater return. Watching Danny work these alliances and allegiances while undercover in Iran is one of the more interesting aspects of the show. Danny is deep undercover and very good at it, and it will be interesting to see how her character continues to evolve.

There’s also Owen Taylor (John Magaro), who spends the first part of the season in the Chicken Coop before being volunteered for a mission involving the season’s central villain, an expat codenamed Viking (Clayne Crawford). Viking has established an intelligence-gathering operation designed to destabilize fragile countries through the precious gem trade, including blood diamonds, using that system to financially support his targets and goals. During the season, the Agency discovers that Viking has family in the UK, so Owen is sent undercover to try to befriend Viking’s sister. It’s a plot that has repercussions for everyone involved and demonstrates the extent to which Viking’s capabilities have been underestimated. Meanwhile, Henry starts picking up on how Martian seems to be coloring outside the lines and tries to figure out how and why. After initially getting rid of him, Henry is forced to work with him again after Bosko intervenes and brings Martian back into the fold because the Viking target is so highly valuable that it requires a sledgehammer, and Martian, who used to be a field agent and is now a handler, certainly qualifies.

There are a couple of other subplots and some nice twists and turns along the way, but those are sort of the main themes of the season. I really enjoyed this quite a bit and watched all 10 episodes in two days. Not bad. It was a little slow starting for me, mostly because I didn’t really remember season one, but as I said, parts of it started coming back to me later. As the season progressed, I started liking it more and more, and by the end I was once again fully invested in the series, possibly even more so than I was after season one. As long as it doesn’t take a lifetime for a third season to air, I might actually remember this show and be able to fully engage with the next season from the beginning. It certainly leaves itself open for at least a third season. There are still a lot of open ends that require closure, and how could you throw away such a talented cast?

While I’m a big fan of Richard Gere eventually getting an Oscar nomination for something, I would say the standout here is actually Jeffrey Wright. Given what Henry has to navigate throughout the season, the arguments he gets into and the various things being thrown at him, Wright’s ability to command presence at all times really makes him stand out. Secondarily, I would cite Saura Lightfoot-Leon as Danny because she has so many wonderful moments, so many ups and downs, and she can’t ever really break because she’s basically living a lie in one of the most dangerous places on Earth. It’s interesting to see how she navigates those little moments where she can finally breathe just enough to get through the day. The rest of the cast is great. Michael Fassbender is predictably good as Martian. I’m sure people will be screen-capturing his tantrum inside his apartment, a scene I’m sure was a one-shot, one-opportunity take where he had to get it right or the production budget was going to balloon. John Magaro also has some heavy lifting to do with Owen and gets considerably more to work with as the season progresses.

This is a very solid spy thriller. If you like this type of thing, it’s right up your alley. It’s clearly made for adults, and it’s made for people who are able to pay attention to small details and track a fairly sizable ensemble across several developing storylines. Depending on what you consider to be a major character, there are somewhere between 10 and 14 characters who all have purpose within the story, and you have to follow them in order to be rewarded by how expertly crafted the script is. If I had anything negative to say about the show, it would be that it’s possibly underutilizing Richard Gere. Bosko is kind of flat, and I think Gere is capable of so much more. That’s part of the problem with Richard Gere. He’s often given roles that don’t have much depth to them, as if all he can do is stand there and be pretty, but he has shown time and time again in independent films like Arbitrage and Time Out of Mind that he has quite a bit of range if he’s just given the opportunity to show it. In a third season, I would really love to see Gere have an expanded storyline that gives him the kind of heft he deserves, something Hollywood apparently doesn’t think he has, which is probably part of why he’s somehow never been nominated for an Academy Award.

The audio description here is uncredited, which makes me slightly nervous. I don’t like it when audio description studios are unwilling to claim their product, and I know sometimes the argument can be that this is outside the studio’s hands because the company they’re providing the track for doesn’t want that. Except I find that incredibly hard to believe here. Nearly every Taylor Sheridan production I’ve watched has been described by Media Access Group, and they’ve had no problem being credited. Media Access Group has also provided description for a lot of CBS content and has never had a problem being credited there either. The previous 101 Studios production I watched before this was Dutton Ranch, and Media Access Group was credited. So I find it hard to believe that The Agency is somehow the one show where Paramount drew a line and said, “No, none shall pass.” It just doesn’t make any sense.

And yes, I’ve listened to the entire credits all the way until the very end without being cut off and thrown into something else. There wasn’t a company, a writer or a narrator. No one is credited for doing the audio description for The Agency. I think I recognize the voice, but without even a company name, I hesitate to credit a narrator incorrectly. Oftentimes narrators work with the same companies over and over, so it becomes somewhat predictable to identify a voice when you know the company. Even though I could assume this is Media Access Group based on their history with Sheridan and 101 Studios productions, it may not be. They might have broken protocol and hired another company, and this could simply be a voice that sounds similar to somebody I’ve heard before.

That being said, from what I can tell, it’s a pretty solid audio description track. The writing is solid across the board. There are a couple of fairly violent sequences that are described well, including an interrogation sequence where a certain character has been severely beaten. The description reveals that they’re missing some teeth in addition to having cuts and bruises across their face, helping to establish how badly their appearance has been altered. The performance of the narrator is at least appropriate for the style of the show. This is a spy thriller, and the narrator’s voice brings some weight to what she’s having to describe. But in this day and age, when we are in a battle to preserve human participation in audio description, “uncredited” is not something I appreciate. So my praise is fairly limited. As I said, I just don’t believe this company was told it couldn’t be credited because that doesn’t match Paramount’s brand or what I’ve experienced with other 101 Studios productions. If you’re doing good work, put the names of the people doing that work on the screen.

You’ll like The Agency if you like anything even remotely approximate to an espionage drama. I’m not talking about your crime-of-the-week procedurals like the NCIS franchise, but patient thrillers that take place over a season or develop across multiple-season arcs. Stuff like Apple’s Slow Horses, HBO’s The Wire or Showtime’s Homeland. This is a show worth investing yourself in, and 101 Studios has had a remarkably strong track record at Paramount+. Taylor Sheridan’s relationship with Paramount is changing, which still feels insane considering how much he has come to define the brand, but in the interim, Paramount has every reason to keep its successful Sheridan and 101 Studios projects moving. Considering the strength of this cast, the unfinished storylines and where these characters are left, I would be surprised if The Agency didn’t see a third season.

A tight, taut thriller that rewards your attention and knows how to manage a large ensemble without making everyone feel disposable, The Agency improved for me as its second season progressed. By the end, I was more invested in these characters and this world than I remember being after season one. Hopefully, season three doesn’t take so long that all of this melts back into the giant amorphous blob of television living somewhere in my brain. The Agency is an excellent ensemble worth spending 10 hours with.

Fresh: 8.4/10