The Night Agent

If you liked Netflix's 'The Recruit' starring Noah Centineo, you'll love Shawn Ryan's 'The Night Agent,' starring Gabriel Basso, Luciane Buchanan, and Hong ...

Ryan’s series raises the stakes of The Recruit, feels more rooted in reality, and takes itself more seriously, giving it a clear upper hand. When evidence points towards the Oval Office, The Night Agent‘s characters and viewers alike will question who can be trusted. Coming off of The Whale, The Menu, and Poker Face, Chau slips on a gray wig and brings the star power as a complex, buttoned-up problem solver whose even-tempered, empathetic falters under mounting pressure. Hendricks pivots from vetting a stack of largely laughable letters to dodging bullets alongside Max Meladze (Laura Haddock), a former CIA asset arrested for murder, while Sutherland goes from manning the phones to evading a manhunt. When the president’s chief of staff, Diane Farr (Hong Chau), extends an olive branch by assigning Sutherland to doldrum desk duty in the White House basement, he answers a distressing night action call and winds up on the run with Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan), a terrified cybersecurity expert whose aunt and uncle were mysteriously assassinated. As the duo fights to stay alive, ever-changing narratives involving the president (Kari Matchett), vice president (Christopher Shyer), his daughter Maddie (Sarah Desjardins), and other FBI staffers unfold in a gripping, fast-paced action-thriller.

What is often an engaging political spy thriller takes far too many detours to stay consistently enjoyable. Plus, you should see Hong Chau's wig.

It may not have the efficiency of the most memorable political mysteries, but The Night Agent is still a solid return to a genre that seems to be dying out of cinemas. That still doesn’t excuse poor dialogue (“It crashed and burned, and when I looked around, I was the only one not wearing a parachute”)—or some glaring plot holes and intentional vagueness that allow the show to avoid explaining itself. Even when The Night Agent rambled, I was eventually involved again when the pacing picked back up or a new, outrageous twist revealed itself. But even a fabulously studied actor like Chau can’t quite hold The Night Agent together, especially when she’s offscreen. A year prior to the events of the series, Peter—forever the standup do-gooder—spots a bomb being planted on a Washington, D.C., metro train, and halts the metro to get everybody off before it detonates. After that point, an invisible time clock starts ticking, and Peter, Rose, and Diane have to figure out how to stop an intricate series of national attacks, somehow connected to the metro bombing. Rose’s call to Night Action unravels a wealth of government conspiracies, terrorist threats, and national security cover-ups that, at the very least, should be enough to get poor Peter a hefty raise and a better schedule. Diane believes in Peter’s integrity, and a year later, is seemingly the only person that he can trust when Rose calls into the Night Action line. But the titular night agent in Netflix’s The Night Agent is an agent, who works at night, and—get this—is waiting for a phone call! And to be fair, it is named after Matthew Quirk’s 2019 novel of the same name; one of those giant-cover-font, John Grisham-esque novels that jump out at you from the Barnes & Noble sale rack. But one night, a call comes through the Night Action line from Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan), an oblivious tech guru who has just witnessed her aunt and uncle being murdered in their own home. In case you might have been unable to ascertain from its title, The Night Agent is about an agent.

Netflix's newest spy thriller “The Night Agent” reminded me of '90s and '00s projects like “In the Line of Fire” and the Bourne movies. That's a compliment.

How does Sutherland get to the bottom of something fishy at the top level of world government and keep Rose alive at the same time? On the other end of the line is a former CEO named Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan), who was given the number and a code to activate Sutherland by her aunt and uncle, who Rose thought were just a pair of ordinary suburbanites. Her security detail is run by a tough agent named Chelsea Arrington (the engaging Fola Evans-Akingbola) and a new addition in Agent Erik Monks (D.B. Netflix’s newest spy thriller “The Night Agent” reminded me of ‘90s and ‘00s projects like “In the Line of Fire” and the Bourne movies. Peter is assigned the Night Action desk, which means he sits in front of a phone for hours every night and then goes home again. For his trouble, he’s basically branded a suspect in the bombing and demoted to a thankless desk job manning a phone that never rings.

Hong Chau and Gabriel Basso stand out on "The Night Agent," a Shawn Ryan thriller based on Matthew Quirk's novel.

Still, it’s a pleasure to see a show better than it might have been, when so often the opposite is true: “The Night Agent” sparks with curiosity and intrigue, a richly detailed show that propels viewers forward with a relentless pace. So it is with “The Night Agent,” created by Shawn Ryan of “The Shield,” and based on a novel by Matthew Quirk. [Hong Chau](https://variety.com/t/hong-chau/) — the Oscar-nominated actor, who’s appeared in “The Whale,” “The Menu,” and “Downsizing” — is an interesting element on [Netflix](https://variety.com/t/netflix/)’s new series “ [The Night Agent](https://variety.com/t/the-night-agent/),” and a revealing one.

In one of those odd juxtapositions that come with the streaming age, a new Netflix drama about an FBI agent in the White House, "The Night Agent," has a ...

Charles Dance (“Game of Thrones”) also enters the chat in the later episodes, but by then, “Rabbit Hole” is already confusing enough that it’s barely worth the effort to try sorting things out. Netflix courts various audience niches, but this more closely approximates the meat-and-potatoes fare that has found success on more traditional platforms. That includes warnings from the President’s chief of staff, Diane Farr (Hong Chau, fresh off her Crisply told and smartly cast, the adaptation of Matthew Quirk’s novel issues a call worth answering. Perhaps inevitably, there are some clunkier aspects. [ “24”-like franchise](https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/entertainment/24-legacy-review/index.html) with “The Night Agent,” a twisty thriller with high-stakes corruption reaching deep into the corridors of Washington and a stalwart FBI agent who suffers for our sins.

Netflix's latest twisty thriller series begins with FBI agent Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) preventing mass loss of life after he spots a bomb being placed ...

For her role in catching the bad guys, Chelsea is offered the top job of being one of the President's personal Secret Service agents. In their bunker, Maddie finally realises just what a sleazeball her father is, and decides to leave him there and take her chances with the bomb above ground. Meanwhile, Rose and Peter have convinced Farr to help them, after she realises her fellow conspirators have gone rogue and are planning to kill not just Zadar, but the President as well. By the end of the penultimate episode, Maddie has been rescued and she and Chelsea are reluctantly en route with Maddie's extremely suspicious-looking father to Camp David, where the President is due to meet Zadar for a friendly chat. So they're off to Camp David, too, to hopefully foil the plot, save the President and clear Peter's name. On the other end is tech expert Rose, who has just seen her aunt and uncle murdered in their home by unknown assailants, and now they are after her.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. In the new Netflix series "The Night Agent," Gabriel Basso plays a young FBI agent stuck in a dead-end job who ...

And this "The Night Agent" does provide. And if you want to learn more about how we put the show together and learn more about our producers and what they're paying attention to, subscribe to our free newsletter. You can tell the upbeat tale of reporters exposing the truth about Watergate in "All The President's Men." GROSS: John Powers reviewed "The Night Agent," the new series streaming on Netflix. I got a kick out of the toxic relationship between the spineless Veep and the daughter who despises him. In the new Netflix series "The Night Agent," Gabriel Basso plays a young FBI agent stuck in a dead-end job who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a huge conspiracy. Alas, like most so-called political thrillers - the recent Apple TV+ series "Liaison" is another example - "The Night Agent" never rises above formula. Are you ready to do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this muck, to keep Rose Larkin safe? And that was enough to keep me watching happily until the very end. It was Rose who made that late-night call to the night action desk as assassins were murdering her secret agent aunt and uncle. You can spoof it the way "The Manchurian Candidate" sent up anti-communist frenzy. Me, I'm hooked on thrillers whose heroes get caught up in treacherous political shenanigans - you know, the attempted military coup in "Seven Days In May," the assassination corporation in the "Parallax View" or the many delirious intrigues that fueled "Homeland."

An FBI agent in a dead-end job suddenly finds himself in the middle of a huge conspiracy. This new 10-part series is a cross between a paranoid thriller ...

And this "The Night Agent" does provide. And if you want to learn more about how we put the show together and learn more about our producers and what they're paying attention to, subscribe to our free newsletter. You can tell the upbeat tale of reporters exposing the truth about Watergate in "All The President's Men." GROSS: John Powers reviewed "The Night Agent," the new series streaming on Netflix. I got a kick out of the toxic relationship between the spineless Veep and the daughter who despises him. In the new Netflix series "The Night Agent," Gabriel Basso plays a young FBI agent stuck in a dead-end job who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a huge conspiracy. Alas, like most so-called political thrillers - the recent Apple TV+ series "Liaison" is another example - "The Night Agent" never rises above formula. Are you ready to do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this muck, to keep Rose Larkin safe? And that was enough to keep me watching happily until the very end. It was Rose who made that late-night call to the night action desk as assassins were murdering her secret agent aunt and uncle. You can spoof it the way "The Manchurian Candidate" sent up anti-communist frenzy. Me, I'm hooked on thrillers whose heroes get caught up in treacherous political shenanigans - you know, the attempted military coup in "Seven Days In May," the assassination corporation in the "Parallax View" or the many delirious intrigues that fueled "Homeland."

Gabriel Basso, Luciane Buchanan, D.B. Woodside and Hong Chau star in Shawn Ryan's adaptation of Matthew Quirk's novel.

But the first episode established that it’s a show with a lot of stock characters and a conspiracy that doesn’t start in a particularly interesting way. The biggest intrigue might be with Ellen (Eve Harlow) and Dale (Phoenix Raei), whom we see executing someone in Racine, WI at the end of the first episode. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere. Our Take: There’s a certain amount of lunkheadedness that envelops the first episode of The Night Agent, more than you’d expect from a show written by Ryan. Maybe that’ll inject some personality into the series, but in the run up to that, all we see are flat line readings and action scenes. He does keep her safe, but not before dealing with conspiracy theorists outside his apartment and a car chase going the wrong way down a local highway. He also seems to be in a loyalty tug-of-war between White House chief of staff Diane Farr (Hong Chau) and his FBI boss, Deputy Director Jamie Hawkins (Robert Patrick). She is staying with her aunt and uncle, who just came back from a business trip. Peter answers and talks her through hiding from the gunmen until law enforcement gets there. As he’s getting treated for his injuries, he spots the man who left the bomb, chases him into an alley, but loses him when a car slams into him. [The Shield](https://decider.com/show/the-shield/), is now adapting [Matthew Quirk’s novel The Night Agent](https://www.amazon.com/Night-Agent-Novel-Matthew-Quirk/dp/0062875469?tag=decider08-20&asc_refurl=https://decider.com/2023/03/23/the-night-agent-netflix-review/&asc_source=web) for Netflix. The Gist: On the Metro train, one of the passengers, FBI agent Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) notices a man leave a backpack and get off the train.