The Watch - Are We in a Golden Age for Spy Television?

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Chris and Andy talk about the bounty of spy TV shows that are airing right now. They cover the new Showtime thriller series ‘The Agency,’ which is based on the French series ‘Le Bureau des Légendes’ (1:00), and how they hope the show is able to go on for multiple seasons and develop like the original did (26:03). They also talk about the first episode of ‘Get Millie Black,’ a Netflix cop drama set in Jamaica (45:21). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need sports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line, pardoning all his sons.

It's Andy Greenwald. Buddy, are you making a reference to the American news? Because I am very ignorant. Would you like me to just? kind of break out A1 and read some stories to you, just kind of like Mark Marin, Air America style? Are you across this? Are you across everything right now?

Dude, I'm obviously referencing our current president, Joseph Biden, pardoning his son, Hunter Biden. And the reason why I do it, and it's great to see your smile and face. You're back in England for a week, but we're recording across time and space to bring people content today. And, you know, I made this joke.

But I have to say, Andy, it's quite a moment for spy shows. And, you know, I'm currently watching three. Lioness, the agency, which we're going to talk about today, and Black Doves, which we're going to talk about on Thursday's show. It's coming on Netflix this week. It's Kira Knightley and Ben Wishaw. And I was like, wondering, is this a, is this a, like, a kind of sweet

twilight of the deep state moment that we're having? And like, is this like the last? three shows before it all gets dismantled and we offload our intelligence gathering to big tech? Like, what do you think about that? So you think, wait, let me, first of all, I'm flabbergasted. I thought that you were bringing up the headline of the day, because you, in your imaginary role as mentor to a teenage ward, would do something different. My guess is like, because I feel like the whole aesthetic that you promote is kind of like a tough love thing.

So I feel like that you wouldn't do that for your own. You think I promote a tough love aesthetic? No, when you talk about your imaginary teenage ward, you definitely imply that you would be more stick than carrot. So I thought you're bringing this up being like, this beta president is teaching his son nothing, that you would do something different. I had no idea you were going to pivot this

into an examination of the end of the classic spy show. It's just something that cross my mind. Which is walk his back for me. I will, because it's like, who's luckier than us right now? Right? Like, these are the shows that we love. These are the shows that we crave. And we've got, frankly, three that are excellent right now.

I don't know. I don't know if you want me to update you on what's going on with Joe and the QRF on Lioness. But Iran better watch their back dog because she is leading a very small invasion of their sovereignty. Do you consider Lioness a spy show? Yeah, because the whole premise of Lioness is that these women are supposed to go undercover. Oh, that's right. Right, right, right.

To expose terrorists or cartel members or I can't wait to find out what happens in season three if we get one. But Lioness and agency, which is based on one of our favorite all-time shows, Libero and Black Doves. Like, it's just we got so much espionage going on. Hell, you could even throw a diplomat in there as. the kind of foreign affairs show. And it's just really kind of weird to imagine being here a year from now and having Cash Patel have turned, has turned the FBI building into a museum of the deep state. Now that it has been eradicated.

He actually said that's what he's going to do day one. Will it be, will he charge tickets? I hope not. I would like to be a docent. Can I just, just one side channel thing? Obviously, we're really zeroing in on this big show that we have to. talk about. Please.

Do you think that your dad would have pardoned you? It depends on what. I'm on the fence about my own answer. Yeah. My dad was,

I would describe a bit of a wandering youth when it came to academic excellence and then an interesting experimental 20s. Nothing made him more mad than me

getting a tattoo or smoking cigarettes. He begged me not to smoke cigarettes and I did anyway. So he was way more mad about that than he was about me, like, waiting until the very last second

to write a half-ass college essay that got rejected. Was he proud of you for becoming one of best cigarette smokers, though? In the sense that some parents are like, I don't want my kid playing tackle football, but if my kid was Jalen Carter, I'd be like, okay, you beat the odds. I was actually, it's funny, you should mention that because just the other day I was recalling a, one of the great drives of my life was getting off work

at the Middle East in Boston at, like, I was barbacking, but I feel like I had like an earlier barback shift, so I got off at like 10. And driving from Cambridge, Massachusetts, from Central Square to Vermont, where my parents were for like August. They used to go up there in the summer. Powered entirely by Camel Lights and Dunkin' Donuts that I was drinking. Dunkin' Donuts coffee at like midnight and driving with the window down as I smoked. as I chain smoked my way through New England

and just arriving in Vermont can you imagine what I smelled like when I hit that small off-season Yeah, I can describe what you smelled like in two words, Ben Affleck It's not that big of a deal But did you roll into Vermont being like Hey mom and dad

Just got here on the power of my own adrenaline I'm going to go buy some X-Rae No, by that time the horse that left the bar. They knew. They knew Robbie. How are you, man? Oh, I'm great. I'm great.

I'm in London. Still love it. Little weird to just be here more often than I am on the west side of Los Angeles. And I'm here to just deliver one of the most champagne problem complaints of all time, which I shared with you,

but I feel like I should share publicly. Absolutely. Which is this time, because of holiday travel, I flew here from New York. I got to say, a flight's too short. Yeah, I mean, it's a very short flight. It is so short, but they pretend that it's not. They make a whole big deal by being like,

turn it off the lights. Like, should we wake you for breakfast? It's one in the morning, ma'am. No, you should not wake me. You should just circle above Greenland for three hours so that I can be a human being when I try to present my credentials to some guy who also is on your diet of coffee and cigarettes and Heathrow in three hours. It is a strange experience when you're just like, I wish I had like one more hour of rest

on this metal tube that is hurtling over. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Exactly. So otherwise, no, otherwise all good. I had a lot of time to watch television. I watched The Agency.

I watched Get Millie Black. I don't know if you had a chance to check that out. I did. I watched the first episode. Okay. So maybe we'll talk about that too. But I do feel like we're beating around the bush because, as you said, it is the end is the end of the espionage thriller.

There is no more deep state apparatus. And we do have at least the agency as a, that's our museum, isn't it? Yeah, I was, I was struck by the fact that the agency, the exterior shots of the U.S. Embassy and the station, the U.S. station, London Station for the CIA is in the same building. It's featured also in Black Doves. It was just like the London spy moment is very strong right now between this and slow horses. Greenwald, I was listening to Joe and Rob talk about this show on the way into work today. They were talking about it on the Prestige TV podcast.

And for as many different ways as I want to come at this adaptation and this series, because it is, I think it's very notably an adaptation of an incredibly important show to us. I was struck by their enthusiasm, which I share, but their enthusiasm for it because they had not watched the bureau. So Joe mentioned like, oh, the bureau and it's a beloved show.

I have not seen it. Rob has not seen it. And so to hear them, like newborn deer, you know, step lightly out into the field and experience this world for the first time.

I was like, I want to go back. I want to go back to not knowing, oh, the reason why like this is like this is because this is this and this. And I'm sure, sure, given the creative firepower on this show, that there will be turns and twists and that

there will be rifts. And it's not like the bureau is such a closely guarded piece of intellectual property that you couldn't make some variations on it, that you couldn't do your own thing. But I was struck by watching the agency, which I really, really liked and wondering if the barrier to love was the fact that I had seen the original. I very much agree with you. I think it's an interesting avenue to drive down. First of all, I do want to get one on the record. It seems like what you're saying is it is important not to engage with the original underlying IP

when dealing with an adaptation. Because as you know, this is a subject that I'm passionate about, passionate about. So thank you, first of all, for your allyship. Yeah, as you are at Hogwarts with the Jedi Blass Shield down, like, don't show me anything. Please. My sweet, sweet ignorance. Two, it is without question that, like, and maybe it's annoying, but so maybe it's good that there's another podcast that can give you the fresh eyes perspective.

But I have to say it. I texted this to you when I was watching it. I really like the show. I'm excited about this show and I'm impressed by the adaptation. My number one takeaway was, holy shit, LeBiro is like top 10 dead or alive. Interesting. I love that show so deeply. that just even hearing some of the familiar melodic riffs of plot

made me, took me back to that summer a couple years ago when we both just dove in and basically we got in at the end. So, except the opposite of Tony Soprano was a good thing because we had all five seasons to just enjoy. Yes. The, what seems very smart about the adaptation, let me pivot by saying, like, you don't, well, even before I start to talk about the adaptation,

I also think that I would feel the same way as Joe and Rob immediately. Like I would have started this by saying, holy shit, here we go. I think that we are probably bumping on A, the memory of the excellence of the original, but also the few deviations that there are in this. And we sort of alluded to this and we talked about the trailer. I think it's borne out by the show. The few deviations are smart deviations towards what I think is more of an American palette or an American style of storytelling, if not an American attitude towards,

international espionage, at least until January 20th, 2025. It's noisier. You know, you're crying a little bit. It's noisier, you know. And one of the things that I love about Libreux is how quiet it can be and how subtle it can be. And part of that is because it's, you know, maybe because it's some French characteristic, but also because the Deja essay, the agency of the Bureau of the French version, it's

French espionage. It is not the biggest elephant in the room like the CIA is. So it just sort of carry it as a different footfall. And that's reflected in the tenor of the show. And I really admire and like that. And I kind of missed that a little bit in this. But that said, one of the central, central things that Eric Rochant did with his show is that he has this vision. And Lecari has pieces of Lecari.

And I'm sure you can pull a bunch of other different writers that Rochon was pulling from too. But this notion of the spy as the perfect blank canvas to investigate ideas of identity and the performance of being human, the Butterworth brothers, who, that sounds made up every time I say it, and their mother, Mrs. really understood that that was a central tenant of the show, and they held on to that very tightly, you can tell. And this version of it, the agency, is at its best to me when it is purely exploring that idea, something that it really starts to do in the second episode. Yeah. So I think that we can talk about a bunch of different things. There are some slight tweaks that they've made. They've introduced the conflict in Ukraine,

which obviously was not in the same kind of situation that it was, it is now that back when they made the original series. I think that there are some cool tweaks that they have made with some of the characters that you can see their parallel in the French show. But I find that like, especially the office politics are quite well done in the agency. One of the things that I loved about the Bureau was the fact that it really hammered home, one of my favorite parts about espionage fiction and spy shows and all this stuff, is that it's this simple idea that you could be on a park bench, right? And you could be listening to a podcast or reading a book or waiting for someone,

and then the person on the park bench next to you or maybe even the person sitting next to you is putting a chalk mark for a, dead drop or is waiting to meet a source or is waiting to meet an asset or is an asset or that there is this underworld in our world that is taking place right in front of us and we just don't notice it. And Malatru, the hero of the Bureau, represented that so well to me because you would get these shots of him walking around Paris or you would get these moments of him working and he's a really unassuming looking guy. Like you wouldn't blink twice if you saw him. You will blink twice if you see Michael Fastbender. He is a movie star. He is cut out of granite. He is exercising quite frequently

in this show. He is kind of continuing the recognizable Fastbender brand of like Warrior Monk characters that he is perhaps the best in the world at playing. And I could not get his character from the killer out of my head while I was watching his Paul come home and search his apartment for bugs and sit, you know, while listening to, you know, classic vinyl on his high-fi. And everything felt very like, almost sociopathic in the way that his killer character is. Whereas for Malletrew, it was like, I'm this shuffling, smoking, pondering, introspective lover and thinker. Yeah, yeah.

He was the intellectual spy. And I keep waiting for this character to tear somebody's larynx out. You know, like I keep waiting for him to go full Jason Bourne, which is not a criticism. It's more of just an observation of how the vibe is different in this show. Yeah, I want to push back only to say that Martian, and that's the American character's name, that Best Bender plays or his code name, his operative name.

I will say that he and I live very similar lives. Yeah, you do. Just in terms of our aesthetic, in terms of the sort of monochrome fitted sweats that I wear while I pad around barefoot listening to classic vinyl and staring at bronze elephant statues. well overlooking the Thames. So that does ring true to me.

Similarly, we're both hashtag girl dads. Yeah. You know, who have spent time apart because of work. And maybe the kids don't always understand what we're doing. But, you know, we believe it's for the greater way. And you just dole out that cash and hope it works for the best. A million percent. But yes.

So it's different. But again, the difference is good. And I think it ought to be different. I think that, let's go through it piece by piece. You mentioned the differences in terms of the setting in the world, because it's not just that this is the CIA, which, again, is one of the biggest players in any of this. And one of the interesting things about La Puro is that DeJSA is part of the Five Eyes,

but it's basically a smaller fish than the bigger pond. Yeah, yeah. And another thing that was kind of brilliant about the show is that Roshant kind of sort of adapted the story from the real world, but with a little bit of a tape delay, so that the early seasons were very much still about conflict in the Middle East. And then the rise of Russia as a global nemesis happened within the show in a way that felt very kind of exciting and organic.

Yeah. One of the smartest things that the Butterworths and Joe Wright did, and there's a piece on Hollywood Reporter today interviewing Joe Wright about this, is that they considered this, they considered the pitfalls in a way that I think a lot of ripped from the headlines shows don't always, or at least in case of Taylor shared and like he loves pitfalls. Like he fucking base jumps at the pitfalls

in terms of like, you know, we're messing with real world stuff here, live ammo. So Joe Wright and his team picked a date, right? They picked April of 2023 for the events of this first season so that they could say, here's where the conflict was in Ukraine, here's what was going on in Sudan, here's the role Belarus may or may not be playing in global conflicts

and then extrapolate from there with fictionalized events, which I think is very, very smart. The Fastbender thing, I guess, I mean, we're two episodes in. I guess I'm of two minds about it because there is something that does feel more American about it in a way that makes sense in the way that he is obsessively driven. This may be a strange analogy to make, but one thing you and I have been talking about is now that we are both, you know, doing more work in the UK or working with people in the UK that like people here don't check their email as much, which I think is really, really, really healthy. People don't send the third email that's like, thanks for replying to my previous email. And Fastbender is the militarized embodiment of that third email. Yeah.

Like, he is so, so extra. And I'm curious to see where that leads, you know, in terms of the embodiment of the show, but also the show's aesthetic. And one of the other things that they've done, you know, in a way that kind of makes sense is I feel like the cheap version of making something American or Western would be like, take all the subtext and make a text. Take all of the subtle stuff that Malletru did and make it a monologue, you know, a clever monologue. And there's a lot of what you and I would probably call Tony Gilroyisms in the Butterworth scripts and I kind of dig it.

But I think that in the case of the show, again, it makes sense for the subtle parts to be more weaponized, to be more action forward to so that he is, because the whole plot where he's teaching in the show, Danny, what it means to be a. spy. That's verbatim. Yeah. Well, no, verbatim means word for word. It's not verbatim, but it is pulled directly from the French version. That and the coyote plot, which is like an

asset in the field who has refused in the past to train under the influence of alcohol. This person is in the program and does not want to like experience alcohol at all,

not even as a sort of like a test of his ability to hold up under interrogation while feeling that way. So that is both in the Bureau. Loosely, you know, like the Nadia plot from the Bureau is now played by Jody Turner Smith, who plays a Sudanese educator, a professor who is working in Ethiopia, and that's where Fastbender's Paul-Marsian character meets her and then leaves her, and eventually they hook back up in London.

There's something that is just, I don't know, do you agree with me about this, that like the scenes, especially like the, the, the, meet me at the restaurant, but spy on the people scene like that. That, again, that was in the original. But I guess I just kind of don't, I'm, I really didn't bump on the, like the bullet pointing of the lines because it is just so much more jacked. The show is more jacked like Fastbender, which I didn't mind. I should also say, and I'm sorry we're kind of going at this from a bunch of different angles,

but you threw me with Cash Patel's Museum of old deep state technology riff. broad broad broad broad strokes before we get even i know we've started specific and now we're going broad and i apologize for that but like this show does not handhold this show i keep saying like oh they made it simpler they made it more action filled it is not a simple show it is not a hand holding show it is not something that feels like it has been noted to death by the same streaming prestige tv note machine that makes everything kind of basic it is naughty it is self-serious, but it is also heavy and feels weighty like a good book might. And I, there were moments in this, again, especially in the second episode, which I think is a lot stronger

than the first, where there was a really kind of unique marriage between this plot that we love, but also Joe writes camera pyrotechnics, the quality of the actors on screen, and the pacing, which just felt like it was aesthetically considered and handmade. And so again, like just to have a show like that. This is what we want, right? This is sort of the overarching theme for even talking about this and maybe even a little bit of Kid Millie Black. Like, thank God there's a smart genre show for adults on the air. Then there are other things about it that make me give me a little bit of pause. But I don't know if you want to stay on the positives.

Let's stay on the positives. I think I'll continue where you're going with that about the Americanization of it. It's all made by Brits. It's so bizarre. Well, that's the thing, is that Joe Wright and the Butterworths are British, Michael Fastbender is obviously. from Northern Ireland you know Jeffrey Wright

Richard Gehrer Catherine Waterson John McGarrow all American but there is a British actor playing an American in a crucial moment in the first two episodes it's very good

there is a kind of blank westernness to it when I don't mean like Western as like cowboy genre I mean Western as the Western world you know I read a very good article and the Wall Street Journal by John Jorgensen

about the making of this show that published over the weekend. And it's... Chris. Yeah. Is you reading the Wall Street Journal like Joe and Mika going to Mar-a-Lago? Are you just trying to, like, open yourself up?

That was such a... You know, I read something really interesting in the Federalist. I figured up some late reading. Anyway, go on. I respect the... You know, in the third hour of Rogan, they kind of touch on this a little bit.

No, it's an order. about the making of the show. It's mostly a profile of Chris McCarthy who is sort of, we can get into the Showtime Paramount part of this in a bit, Chris McCarthy runs for now the Paramount TV business.

They spent a lot of money on the show. They got a lot of big actors. Clearly. The way, if you're watching the series and you notice a kind of, to paraphrase Courtney Love, so real, it's beyond fake, you know, look to the office,

in the London station. It's because that's like an incredibly expensive video wall that is projecting London at various points in the day and time and weather in a soundstage that they built in London. So that is like I think something like a $12 million investment to make it look like it's day or night or raining or whatever. And you know, if you're watching this and you're like, we know maybe because we've seen the original,

series, but you may look and be like, wow, Catherine Waterson doesn't have a ton to do just yet. And we know how this show is going to evolve, probably, but I find that the level of commitment to it and also the investment in it is really, really hard. It's a really good point because, again, one of the benefits of knowing basically and probably what the story is going to be is that we see people already and we're like, oh, I can't wait until X happens to them.

or that's going to be an interesting journey for why. But when we were watching the French show, we didn't know who any of the actors were outside of Matthew Cassavitt. So there was no sense of prominence. Like this person is going to reveal themselves to be a major player or have an interesting arc. That was one of the joys of discovery with that show. With this, you're sort of like seeding actor landmines in plain sight.

Yeah. Like you don't cast these people unless you're going to give them something to do. And that takes an, that requires a financial commitment to have them stick around and be there from the beginning, which, again, also feels kind of rare. It does feel like this kind of protected jewel that somehow survived all of the corporate shenanigans that led to Showtime being Showtime on Paramount Plus or whatever it is now. Well, so this brings me to my other point that is, I really hope that this show is successful

because one of the things I love about the Bureau is it's multi-seasonal arcs for these characters and the way in which you think you're looking at a background player who becomes the hero, or you think that this show is about one thing, about maybe a man trying to live one life rather than many lives as a spy, and it becomes about something else. And I wonder whether or not this is the perfect place for this show, because obviously based on their commitment to letting Taylor Sheridan cook as many meals as he wants at once for as many seasons as he feels like he needs to,

David Glasser, who's Taylor Sheridan's producer, is one of the producers on this series. It is, to me, I would be very surprised if we don't get multiple seasons of this. The only thing that would shock me is just like, I guess FastBender just signed up for that. You know, like, he's somebody who has been pretty selective and what he works on over the last couple of years.

He's done kneecap this year. He's the killer last year. You know, like, I think he has become somebody who is just like, I work when the spirit moves me, but not because I need to like grind out something every nine months. And this will be a demanding role for him that will take a long time. But one of the things I'm really hopeful about is that we don't have like a two-year wait for the next season of the of the Bureau. That's a point I didn't even consider. I mean, it is a really interesting test of what has been

a faltering prestige TV economy in the sense that we seem to have diverged, like two roads diverge from what was supposed to be this great promised contemporary moment. And the roads were, you know, starry, high stakes, high budget, autourish content and TV shows. And what we've seen over the last few years with projects ranging from, you know, biggest genre stuff like House the Dragon to suddenly surprise successful stuff like Ted Lasso or Severance, that the people involved in making the former category of show, autourish, prestige, expensive stuff, cannot keep up with the, yearly demands intelligence.

They just don't do it. So this show is coming at us with FastBender is a movie star. And... Richard Gear is one of the biggest movie stars of the last 50 years. And acts like it. He's so fucking sick in the show. I love him. I love everything about him being on it.

And, you know, it's interesting. This is, you know, Wikipedia isn't real life. And I probably could have found out more info than this. But I did note that Joe Wright, you know, major film director and Butterworths, who are major film writers, absolutely wrote and directed the first two episodes, and at least according to what's been released, TBA, the rest of them for this season.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, so you're, as you've definitely found out, there is a different difference in the culture of how shows get made in England versus how they get made in the States, right? Like, in the UK, there is a primary author, a creator, writer, who often writes the entire series. Now they may have a staff and they may have people who are contributing,

but for instance, Black Doves, which is coming next week, is written and created by Joe Barton, who did Giri Haji. And there are different directors, but he wrote the series. I know that the Butterworths are incredibly in-demand screenwriters

and have many projects going and also are accomplished playwrights. So I don't know if they also have time to write, eight, ten episodes of the agency every year. But that'll be an interesting to see the hybrid model and everything. But I guess my point is, do we need them?

I mean, that'll be kind of interesting because the Bureau didn't have until the very end when O'Dryard came in, who is now in the Oscar race for what's the name of the movie, Elena Perez. Amelia Perez. Amelia Perez. I'm sorry, I haven't seen the movie. but and we you know no need to re-hash that again but so one of the most interesting things that has ever happened in the history of television where a creator turned to show I didn't just rehash it because I don't think people know well we've talked about it a bunch of times but like the thing about the bureau that was so exceptional is it in many ways it's like it was the most it this feels like a little bit grandiose but I kind of stand by it that it was one of if not the most exciting shows to watch on TV since the wire in the way that it grew cute cumulatively in what you were talking about.

Like you think it's one thing, but it's 10 things deeper than that. And each season stretches its arms wider to take in more of the world, or in the case of the Wire of Baltimore, and it somehow pulls it off. And you just care so deeply about secondary, tertiary characters and are continually surprised and compelled by their depth. And then it did something that no TV show has ever done, and I'm not sure of any TV show ever should, which is that Roshat was going to end his series after five seasons,

looked at the landscape of finale's, decided that they, mostly failed, which this would make, you know, by the way, stick the landing available on Delta flights. So if anything was ever going to get me to do more, it was like, God damn. That's so funny because you always get so bad when you don't see the watch on Delta. You're like, yeah, I check every time I'm on an airplane. I was shocked. And let me tell you, I bet every single person who was sleeping on the four hour flight or whatever across the Atlantic was missing out on hearing the 18-minute excerpt of my podcast. with Amanda about girls or whatever it was.

Anyway, for the finale, he decided the thing that link, looking at the history of TV finalies, most of them did not stick the landing, whatever, however you say in French, and in his view is because of sentimentality, that the creator felt too close to his or her creations to give them honest resolution.

And so he invited the award-winning filmmaker, Jacques Odiard, to take the show and end it. And he gave him carte blanche to end it. However, he O'Diard saw fit and that Rochant would just sort of offer, you know, with Outs on the ground, help and advice to getting him in a position to end the show, but whatever he wanted to do, he could do. And it led to totally intense and insane and meditative and I think quite moving to our finale that feels conceptually and aesthetically completely different than everything that came before. So anyway, it's one of the greatest endings to a show I've ever seen. It is. And I hope that in like,

four to seven years, we're talking about how whomever came in to land this plane, that they're inspired by that as well. Joe Wright's like, I'm right here, man. What are you talking about? You know how hard it is to have a steady gig? But do you think, I guess I'll just, here's a question for you. I realize you're about to throw one to me. We have recently been watching a lot of pilots and starting a lot of shows. And I think that we are both, to varying degrees, have some fatigue from that. How do you feel about engaging with a show that is starting? And I think that what like Joe and Rob and other people listening to this podcast who are new to this property might be feeling is like, oh, this one has legs. This one feels good. Are we blind to that because we're

already thinking about the finale? I mean, we're just talking about it, even in a hypothetical way, in a hypothetical way. Or are we doing the worst possible thing where we are judging this against our five years of experience? Because I do, I do want to, I do want to want to, this is the most over-intellectualized talky way of saying this, but like, there's a vibe to these shows that we have been clamoring for, regardless the fact that it's just a sick international spy show, but like, okay, we are delivering you something with enough thought and intention to clearly reward investment. Like, they have cast it, they have built a machine that is going to go wide. You know, you don't get that feeling that like they're worried about getting canceled.

No, I mean, even as you're watching these first two episodes, like, the appearance, of Dominic West as Oh, speaking of the wire, exactly. The head of the CIA who is an uncredited or at least unpublicized cameo, who I imagine to our point about like keep an eye on who's in this show because they aren't going to

stay in the same place. I was like, oh shit. You know, like, I want more of this. I want more kind of like creative casting in that regard. I think that for me, the moment that I love the most in the first two episodes is going to be pretty stupid, but it is illustrative of what I think I'm looking for to give me more than just like a kind of secondhand feeling, a secondhand sensation of

watching an Americanized and westernized version of a French show that I love, is when, first of all, Jeffrey Wright, it's the best thing on this show right now, like he is absolutely doing the most Jeffrey Wright shit of how. deeply, deeply, deeply intellectual, but also deeply soulful, like, eyes and performant style. All the stuff that's in the office, it's the best conceived thing I think Joe Wright did with this series is the vastness of the office, the viper pit attitude of people who are cutting each other off while they're walking to elevators or double-crossing one another over candy bowls and coffee machines. and it's just an incredible representation of an office as a microcosm. And there's a moment when Fastbender's Paul character,

who is reintegrating back into the London station after being away for six years, much like Malletru in the Bureau, is talking to Jeffrey Wright's character, Bosco, and he says the Jeffrey Wright character is like, you may have post-mission stress disorder. And Fastbender's character says, is that a Joy Division album,

which obviously is a joke geolocated to my interests, but I was also like, ah, a real person has emerged. You know, because, like, Fastbender is so blank and is so good at wearing, like, these are plain clothes that no one will notice, even though I am the most beautiful man in four continents. You know, like, he is so good at doing blank that to have him have a personality and a sense of humor,

I was like, yes, okay, these guys know each other. These guys make familiar ball-breaking jokes to one another. They know what Joy Division is. They are kind of like, I need a little bit more coloring in. You get that from Magaro and his lumbar supporting chair. You get that from Catherine Waterston and her weird, like, I don't know whether to hug you or shake your hand or, like,

am I in love with you after all of our intense Zoom conversations? Or am I just like your handler? Like, all that stuff is so good. I want them to color these characters in, and I know that they will because I know the source material, but they can color them in with any crayon they want. The broad strokes of the story, I'm sure they'll keep. But I think that they can do a lot with the characters, and that's what I've got my eye on. I think it's a great observation.

I totally agree with you that the show comes alive in the first episode when they go into the office. I think John McGarro, I've had McGarrow stock for a while, by the way. I mean, that's why I read the Wall Street Journal is to find out who he's stock in. It's a very small part of the journal. It's a very, very small column next to the S&P. The dynamic in the office is great. One of the things that the Bureau did so well was the bureaucracy of the Bureau in the sense that these characters were often having intense conversations in the cafeteria line. And it was so deeply French that they were getting beautiful meals at lunchtime, including shredded carrot salad that we joked about all the time.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about the salad. I feel like there was a nod to that. in the scene when Bosco appears to be eating cake in the office before someone comes and grabs him. I thought that the my favorite scene, I think, I mean, the show generally just amps up in the second episode. And I think that maybe that's, what's his name, Eric Glasser, is input. David Glasser, yeah. David Glasser, sorry, where it's like a lot of this was happening in Liburo, but I don't remember one of the fake Doctors Without Borders doctors jumping on the back of an abandoned military vehicle

and using a howitzer to mow down an entire battalion of opposing troops, that definitely felt a little sharing. I was wondering if that was like a little, like, if they were like, God, where are we going to get an actor who can convincingly portray an army ranger? And then Dave Glasser was like, say no more. And broke out a binder of dudes who have like incredible neck muscles. Yeah.

He was Joe Dumars with a second phone being like, I got a couple guys. They're in Iran currently, but I can get him here in 20 hours. But again, like, that seems fine to me as an adjustment for the American-slash-Western version of the show, as long as you keep the things that they keep or steer into the things that they're steering into, like the scene when John McGarrow is brought into the situation room with Richard Gear. And Richard Gears, like, who the fuck is this? He's like, I'm Owen. He's like, what the fuck is Owen doing here?

That's Gilroy coded, and I'm here for it, and I love it. I also think you're making the point about the way Joe Wright and his production designer designed that incredibly beautiful glassy office. And I did get the sense in a positive way that there were a lot of conversations about what Spycraft means now. And it's an interesting hybrid because a lot of what we see, and you and I probably see all of it when it comes to spy shows or spy movies or spy books, there's a dividing line between the people who are like, let's embrace the way SpyCraft is now in a world where it's a impossible to have secrets. Or let's just do a period piece where you're changing your identity and you're shredding documents and you're doing dead drops. The Bureau did this really well, which is to say that both are happening at the same time. You need the old ways and the new ways and you try to have a sort of have to have a hybrid. Yeah, but dude still have like flip phones in the

bureau, right? Exactly. And so what this show does, again, I think it's smart. It's leaning into it is so much of this work is done on screens. Now, the video conferencing was in the bureau, But like there were so many screens, including Richard Geer, Zooming, basically doing our podcast, the way we're doing it right now with Dominic West, made me feel like there was some thought about the 2023 of it. Like there was a sense of small detour. Like I've just been, I haven't read it yet because I can't travel with a hardcover book, but there's a numerous comedy book out. What's going on with you in packing? Hold on. This is good.

I travel way too much right now. So I'm not going to bring a hardcover book. My experience with you, though, is that you bring like a giant wardrobe with you. I was in, that's when I have people in black cars picking me up. So it sounds like I'm being, when you're about to get fucking redacted? Yeah. That's what I'm a wooden,

that's what they find out if I'm a wooden duck. Are you a podcaster or are you a writer on this show? No, when I'm like getting the nice, you know, thanks HBO lifestyle and like just check. in all the bags, but the first half of my travel right now was East Coast Thanksgiving, like a bunch of cities, Amtrak, rental car, like, I had to downsize. You were doing the work. I understand. So you just have like one like over the shoulder bag, you know?

Yeah, I'm basically like Martian. I'm ready to go at any time. But the reason I brought this more comedy thing is like it is a novel about like a city with giant walls where people can't remember things or speak to each other. And all the interviews, he's just like, do you know, I feel that we lost some sense of connection during the recent global pandemic. Like, no fucking shit. But all of this is to say, I feel a little bit of that Murakami quote

in this show, which I like. Like that for all of the living in someone else's skin, there's also the sense of deep impersonality. Like you aren't actually yourself, you aren't actually talking to people. No one is who they say they are. And that does feel very contemporary in a way that all good spy fiction

is about the moment. that it's being created and not just about the storyline. He says from a zoom angle in his like weird room. You're right. And I also cannot wait for the third episode because I don't know if Joe Wright directed it. I really like Joe Wright stuff. Joe Wright loves symmetrical lights, sharp angles,

men standing against architecture that reveals something about their interiority. He takes his time to do that kind of stuff. And I like it too. I love it in Anna Krenna. I love it in Hannah. I love when he does that stuff.

But I do think that this show would benefit from a more straightforward visual language maybe. You know, like a kind of like, here is Michael Fastbender has walked into the room and Richard Gere is there. The scene is sold already. I don't need like, oh, check it out how the pens are all symmetrical. I agree with you.

And I found it to be bordering unclostrophobic. Let's get these directors out of here, man. You know what I mean? Just make a TV show. I mean, you're not wrong about that. But like the, there was a moment. This is probably the last thing we should say about the show, but for the moment. But the opening credits, which I believe are, it's Jack White's cover of the U2 song, Love is Blindness,

turned up way too loud for normal speakers. Well, also, shout out to the end of the first episode where the last line is love is blind. and then Love's Blindness kicks in. There was, I'll be frank with you. I ended up really liking the show, but when I watched those opening credits, I was like, what if no one involved in this has any taste? Well, that to me was just like,

was Paramount being like, we should have our own slow horses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's a piece of it. I mean, you mentioned there were we living in the golden age of spy shows set in London, and there is the slow horses effect

where like that is such a hit beyond its genre and recognized the Emmys and stuff that there is definitely some co-toucher. tail riding. And that is not, that's not dumb to try to market it that way or to try to appeal to that demographic, even though, I mean, there's, there's, there are many types of spy fiction, but I think generally they are either knock around humanity driven fuckups, but slightly funny and interesting, which is the slow horses. Some of my favorite movies are like that. The hopscotch. Yeah, sneakers. Or sneakers. Or there's the like, we are all,

priests in the conclave of identity, you know, which is like... That's boring. And we worship a vengeful god. Yeah, right. And this is definitely more in that. You have no idea what I have to do to keep the blanket of freedom snug around you.

Thank you, Director Patel. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute. beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for. That's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back. Getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably so you can actually join the moment

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Get savings with yellow sale signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. Do you want to talk a little bit about Get Millie Black? I do because I feel like you would suggest that there was kind of a rubric for this of like getting exactly what we literally the two of us want in TV. I am exhausted right now and in a great way. But like I fucking love TV right now.

I think that this will be an interesting year because I wonder whether there is now so much television that is at least of competent level that like you're going to see a lot of diversity across different best of the year lists. Oh, I hope so. I noted that the New York Times TV, like best of year TV, did not mention my two favorite shows. You know, so I was like, I haven't checked out yet. But I was like, that is, that is a very interesting development that I did not. We have now split away from like group think, I think in a way that's pretty, pretty good.

But it's also going to make it harder to say, oh, obviously this was the year of this, you know. But I do think that we are embarrassed for choice. And I think a lot of people are. I think depending on what you like, you have two or three things. Now, I never really expected a moment where there would be a incredible cop show like on HBO like at Millie Brack. I don't know. Incredible. I've watched one episode.

I enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah. and all this other stuff. Chris, are you saying that your top 10 list will be the Anne Seltzer poll of the TV landscape? No hurting. You're just one brave...

My Aunt Seltzer poll would definitely be Landman at number one, plus nine points. That totally would be. White women are coming home for Landman. But speaking of the opposite of white women coming home, get Millie Black. HBO and UK Channel 4 co-production. I feel like we have for...

Shout out channel floor. Shout out my hosts. As soon as this podcast is done, I can't wait to fire up Jamie's Monday nights and early December meals. Because my guy, Jamie Oliver, literally has a bespoke show for every week of the year. I feel like for years on this podcast, whenever we've had mailbags or the opportunity to do this, I feel like even going back further to when I was doing columns and stuff in Granlan, like we have expressed the desire for two things. One, a chicken recipe that stays dry from start to finish.

No, okay, three things. Two, crime shows with real senses of place set in cities or countries where, much like the great, you know, world crime literature has done for us, like that actually give us a real feeling for a place. And locals only kind of almost like the ordained crime show of it. given place. We've also often said, we'd like to see some of our favorite writers given the chance, novelists, to tell a TV story. And with Get Millie Black, we have both of those things. It is a cop show set in Kingston, Jamaica in the present day. And it is created and, at least the first

episode, is written by Marlon James, who is a novelist who wrote a brief history of seven killings, a book that you and I both. Really? Really. My brief history of seven killings adaptation. That, I believe, died on the vine. I know it was at Netflix. It was at Amazon. I would love for it to come back. But in the meantime, he adapted this himself from a short story he wrote.

And man, it's fucking cool, is my review of the show. I really, really, really liked it. And there are some caveats. But I feel like they are the caveats of what I most want, which is writers who don't usually spend their time making TV, making TV. So you get a lot of voice. It is, you get a lot of voiceover.

There are scenes that are clearly cobbled together in ADR. You're dealing with like a scope of storytelling that it's possible that like, sometimes you get a sense that the show is writing checks that its production can't cash. Yeah. There's a disconnect in a way between the imagination of the story and the production. But I'm cool with it. Like in an era of so much corporatized streamlined IP stuff, like it's handmade, you know. And I know that the last time I said, this feels handmade.

was disclaimer episode one. And that's... Presumed innocent episode. No, that's the finest television show of the year. But anyway, I really recommend this. So just as a brief, you know, just for people... I do not get the sense that the show has been heavily promoted. Yes, that is true.

And that is a consequence of both the sheer volume of stuff we have on streamers right now, but also especially, I think it affects international programming. And we are in, like, nobody has it better than us, whether you're watching my brilliant friend, or you're watching Millie Black, or you're watching Cleo on Netflix, or you're watching a thousand other shows from all over the world. Like, the truly unique thing about this moment

is our access to international programming. It's unprecedented in television history. this so get millie black by the way it says uh at least online that the show was filmed in 22 so i don't know there was delayed by strikes or just the glut of like the runway to get things on well they were probably trying to line up with the agency's uh 2023 kind of you know they're giving it a lot of thought um it was about a Jamaican born police officer named millie black played by Tamara Lawrence british actress who was working as she she's awesome she has a long voiceover backstory. By the way, much like Dune Prophecy, this begins with like 15 minutes of

why isn't this the show? But it's actually much more compelling because it's written by Marlon James. And then it becomes a cop show. There's kind of a misdirect where it's like, this is going to be a searing story about family and identity and the regressive social, sexual, sexual politics of Jamaica. And then it is all of that, but it's also a fucking cop show. So it's like, thank you for giving me everything. Anyway, she is shipped off as a child to London and then comes home to deal with some family stuff and also immediately is thrown into a case. And that kind of is my favorite thing about the show.

You can see the bones of a different version of it that might have been also a good show, you know, and more of like a family drama. Yeah, yeah. The fact that what motivated Marlon James and what got HBO in Channel 4 or whoever else interested was the opportunity to do both, that's the ambition that I almost like most about the show

because it's just it goes so slow for 10 minutes and then it lurches forward so fast that I almost thought I had missed an episode. Yeah, it's not a Trojan horse would indicate that eventually down the line this show will reveal things about like this person's family,

this person's identity, this person's relationship to colonialism, whatever, which there are references to in this first episode. I definitely think that if this show had like an issue, it was like the two-track thing and also the collision of Marlon James's books are incredibly dense and they're written in the vernacular of the person who is the POV character of any given moment, like especially in seven killings. You have to almost teach yourself language as you're reading the book because each character has such a good

distinct way of communicating. I felt like the collision between his authorial presence and just television as a medium was fascinating and occasionally like a little bit laborious, but like I think I got it and I was getting into it as the first episode ended. There is a version of this that's just Millie of Kingstown. You know, like and yeah, yeah. And I would and I would watch. But I'm also here for this version of it as well. I also, I mean, you said Tamara Lawrence is great.

I really like the performance of China McQueen who plays Millie. sister, who is presumed dead by the events of the opening. I really, really liked Gershwin Eustache, who plays her partner on the force. And it's just, you know, I'll just circle back to where we started, which is like one of my favorite ways to travel the world, at least before I started fucking flying across oceans all the time, was through crime fiction. Yeah. Like the John Burdette books taking me to Bangkok or, um, I mean, all those New York review of, John Faud Isso and World's crime. Yeah, exactly. Izzo. Some of the great reading experiences

of my life. And so to have a show, it's just like, yeah, these people who made the show in Marlon James particular, and also, I believe the director, Tanya Hamilton, is also Jamaican born. Like, they know this place. And here we are in it. And the buildings and the way that

the relationship the cops have to the community, the way they move through the world, is so interesting. It is transporting. And yet also there's that familiar crutch of like every police station anywhere in the world has the captain who's just getting too old for this shit and feels like they shouldn't be messing around and going in without backup or whatever. And then this one also has Gendry Barathean. So have I sold you yet?

I hope people check it out. On Thursday's show, Andy and I are going to be talking about a new Netflix series Black Doves that's coming. I mentioned that earlier. More spy, more stars. This one is Ben Wishaw and Kira Knightley. This one has a different vibe to it. And I'm very excited to see Andy's reaction to it.

I'm very excited to talk about it with him. We also probably will hit Skeleton Crew, which is the new Star Wars series on Disney Plus from John Watts. And it starts Jude Law. So, you know, I feel about Ben Wishaw the way. I feel about Brian Tyree Henry and Eternals, right? You just want to play football with him? I just think he's like our greatest, one of our greatest actors.

I also, I don't think we said this at the top. If my audio is a little wonky this week, I blame it on my packing skills. No. You know what? Honestly, you sound really good. Yeah, but that's you listening. I don't know what, you know, Joe's up for. Also, you know, it doesn't matter because you sound sharp.

Yeah. Your takes. Do you know how hard I'm going to crash as soon as we had this podcast? We're going to stop recording. I've been working all day talking. And now I'm just talking. So this, this wick is about to run out. We're going to stop recording, but I am going to do a two-hour voiceover for you describing

Cooper DeGine and his play against Baltimore. Why don't we talk about that? You're talking about the end of the deep state when our love affair... I'm longingly talking about the end of the deep state. Our love affair with Brian Chalkins is just beginning. Like, do you know what, like, people listen to this podcast know that I have a tortured emotional relationship to sports. As hard as it was for me to miss the Eagles Ravens game yesterday because I was asleep,

there is a great, great, great joy in waking up in the like the inky pre-dawn morning and just learn that Cooper de Gene picked up Derek Henry and put him down. We live in a world where we get a Jamaican cop show, multiple spy shows, and we have a white defensive back on the Eagles. I don't know what everyone's so down about.

Who is the reincarnation of Andre Waters? I don't know what's saying. Hey, man. It's wonderful to see you. I will see you later this week. We will continue this cross-continental conversation. And then, you know, coming up, we have a lot of really great stuff because we have the end of the year. So we have best episode and best TV of the year. Very excited for that. We are starting to film our episodes. So people should keep an eye out for when we start uploading these to a destination. Did my HMU budget get approved? Your HMU budget has been approved. Yeah.

We're just good at it, but we're going to do it in post if that's cool. No, that's fine. I just wanted to do every podcast with the meme of me painting my clown makeup on. It's my favorite meme. Andy, great to see you. Thank you to Kai McMahon for producing us. We'll talk to you on Thursday. In a food system this big, feeding America races to make sure good food reaches neighbors facing hunger.

That's why we work in real time, using technology to connect food to people fast. Together with supporters like you, we part of the food. with local organizations to rescue food quickly, safely, and at scale. So it reaches a home while it still can. Hunger doesn't wait. Food rescue can't either. Give now to help rescue good food for neighbors at feedingamerica.org slash rescue food.