I would first like to thank CBS for supplying for review only a single episode of its new series, “CIA,” spun off from its older series “FBI.” In these streaming, serial times, a critic may have to watch as many as 10 hours of a show before putting fingers to keyboard, pen to paper, pointed stick to clay tablet. Of course it’s great to see as much as possible, but having just one hour of TV to watch and consider before writing does free up screen and brain time.
It also means one is constrained to talk in terms of “potential,” because in broadcast television especially, episodes may be finished just before they go on the air, and producers futz with the formula as the season goes along, adding or subtracting characters. “CIA,” which premieres Monday, reportedly went through changes both in front of and behind the camera even before reaching the air, suggesting that the producers didn’t quite know where they were going. (There are five names attached to the “created by” credit, like the songwriting credit on a modern pop song.)
But we can make some educated guesses as to its future, because it springs from a franchise, and first among those listed creators is Dick Wolf, the “Law & Order” and “Chicago” man; and because it bears some resemblance to the network’s “NCIS” shows; and because experience has shown that such series, if they live long enough, come to life like Pinocchio. Obvious from teaser to tag, it’s conservative entertainment both in the sense that it trades on old successes, and that it pictures an America more threatened than threatening. Although the nation is in danger, it is a different sort from the ones we face daily and, which, being stranger than fiction, have no place here.
The series stakes its ground in the time-honored, time-worn conceit of clashing personalities forced to work side by side. The Oscar and Felix in this concoction are, respectively, CIA agent Colin Glass (Tom Ellis), loose, and FBI guy Bill Goodman (Nick Gehlfuss), tight, bunged together in a special secret CIA-FBI hybrid — so special that they are the only two people in it, and so secret that the writers can do anything they want with it. It takes no trained profiler to glean everything you need to know about these two from Colin’s leather jacket, Bill’s salaryman suit, their differing hairstyles and facial hair (some versus none), all expressed in their distinct approaches to crime fighting. Still, in the annals of crime fiction, there is no couple so odd that they won’t eventually become one — much in the way that cats will create a shared social space by rubbing their scent against one another. (I thought you’d like to know.) So as not to keep you on tenterhooks, “CIA” gets you most of the way there by the end of the first hour.
With his James Bond 1990 vibe, Colin is the partner one instinctively prefers, unless one has a natural liking for Eagle Scout types. (Surely there are some of you out there.) There are no vodka martinis to shake, not stir, but in one scene Colin (born in America but raised in England, ergo the accent) goes into a steam room to trade information with a beautiful Russian agent. (She: “How did you know I was looking for this?” He: “How did you know I was in Kiev in 2019?”) Bill, who thinks like a cop, doesn’t quite trust Colin, who doesn’t think like one.
Providing guidance and backup are Necar Zadegan, who was in “NCIS: New Orleans,” as New York station deputy chief Nikki Reynard, and Natalee Linez as computer-wrangling analyst Gina Gosian. Jeremy Sisto crosses over from “FBI” as Bill’s “real” boss, who has his own special assignment for him that will surely drive episodes going forward. I would bet matchsticks that they will be joined by at least one additional regular — probably a funny one.
I don’t want to go too deep into the plot, which involves a supersonic weapon, stolen software, assassins on motorcycles and a common ticking-clock device, but it’s closer to “Moonraker,” say, than “Slow Horses.” The trick the good guys play to bring the bad to heel makes no real sense, only TV spy sense. But this is, after all, television, and “CIA” knows what some of us want, or will settle for, from our spies.
As to the question of potential, of course it has some.
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