Low-level FBI agent Peter Sutherland works in the White House basement, manning a phone that never rings—until the night it does, propelling him into a conspiracy that leads all the way to the Oval Office.
Throughout its ten episodes, “The Night Agent” unfolds with palpable tension and intrigue, clearly adapted from a novel by an author with more experience in his writing than just fiction. Indeed, it is not surprising to learn that Matthew Quirk has reported on crime and terrorism in several national publications because the plot at the center of the conspiracy in the first season of this series is frighteningly plausible. Contrivances and conveniences abound, of course, to move the plot forward, but there is a surprising logic to the forward motion even at times like those when believability is stretched a smidgen. It certainly helps that the protagonist is one of those classic espionage protagonists who use impulse and intelligence to save the day.
Even the hero’s surname is something of a callback to a previous TV hero (well, the actor, not the role – which is to say, the role by way of the actor) in a similar series. Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) was once recognized in the counterintelligence universe as a national hero, having thwarted a terrorist attack on a public train that, thankfully, resulted in only one death, as opposed to the dozens that could have resulted. Two years later, he’s manning a telephone in a secret part of the government’s infrastructure, answering calls from deep-cover operatives and passing their intel along the chain of command. The latest call to that telephone is obviously the incident that sets this series into motion.
On the other end is Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan), a whiz-kid in cybersecurity who happens to be the niece of two agents affiliated with the same agency for which Peter takes phone calls. They’re both killed shortly after a discreet conversation, from which Rose is only able to gather that something nefarious is afoot in the White House, but not before giving Rose instructions for calling that desk phone and information that only Peter and his covert allies will be able to decipher. As it turns out, the FBI Deputy Director (Robert Patrick) was once the handler for the information being dispersed by the now-dead agents, and Peter’s boss, White House Chief of Staff Diane Farr (Hong Chau, formidable with steel-gray hair and a no-nonsense attitude), has Peter put Rose into hiding until more concrete steps can be taken. The problem, of course, is that, well, something is afoot at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The first pair of episodes here is about establishing Peter and Rose, our co-protagonists, and the unlikely events that will pair them together in a race against the clock. Basso and Buchanan share solid chemistry as two people equally capable in their respective fields, but because of the conspiracy enveloping them, they are a bit out of their depth. Soon enough, the series proves to us that, aside from these two, no one is necessarily safe, a concept that is personified by the presence of merciless killers “Ellen” (Eve Harlow) and “Dale” (Phoenix Raei). The quotations are essential because it would be foolish to suspect that these two even have “real names” anymore, let alone these names.
Harlow, in particular, is having a ball eating up the scenery as a hardened, methodical, and dead-eyed assassin without scruples or a conscience for anyone except her partner-in-killing. The gimmick of these two is that at least one wants to raise a child. The set-up of the joke is that “Ellen” comes to realize this just after our introduction to them: A household is an essential piece of information, and they lure its poor current resident into a trap by dangling a prop (but very much alive and real) baby in front of her to get inside. A surprising amount of the show is dedicated to the illicit activities of these two, who are called upon to clean up the loose ends as Peter and Rose investigate.
A twin plot develops, also following a man-and-woman pair of investigators: Secret Service agents Chelsea Arrington (Fola Evans-Akingbola) and Erik Monks (D.B. Woodside), both of whom have been assigned to protect Maddie Redfield (Sarah Desjardins). She’s the daughter of the Vice President (Christopher Shyer), a man whose outward grieving – for losing his wife to cancer and Maddie’s younger sister to an accidental drowning – is a thin veil covering up his own shameful temper and corruptible politics. Maddie is kidnapped in this twin plot, and the perpetrator may have a surprising connection to Peter’s recent past.
The way these two plots connect is genuinely surprising once we get there, and in a refreshing twist, there are still more than a couple of episodes to go when we do. This series is dedicated to staging a solid action sequence, such as a shootout in the eighth episode that results in a jarring reset of our expectations, as it is to unfurling this plot and these characters with cunning and intelligence. Does everything hold up to scrutiny in “The Night Agent?” No, that would be unrealistic to hope for, but as with any espionage show worth its salt, it gets us excited to see where Peter Sutherland ends up next.
Now available on DVD