Riveted through 50 hours of intense spy thriller telly – ‘The Bureau’ on Paramount +, only £3.99 a month for the first three months – I could well understand how it was so successful (critically or in terms of audience numbers?) that the American remake soon followed, with Michael Fassbender and Richard Gere, among others. I couldn’t wait.
But the waiting was good. So good, in fact, I didn’t want it to end. And, as it turned out, the waiting was much – much – better than what I’d been waiting for.
Before we start: the English translation of the French title is rendered as ‘The Bureau’. Which doesn’t include the payoff in the full French version: ‘Le Bureau des Légendes’. Légende as in legend, which as all spy thriller addicts know, is what the agent’s ‘cover story’ is called. But at this level, you don’t have a cover story; your cover story is who you are. You never EVER let your guard down to ANYONE, you become that person … and remain him or her, even when the electrodes are clipped to your fundamentals after 72 hours of isolation, light deprivation, starvation and savage beatings…
… and in the process, lose who you really are.
This is one of the key elements of all good spy stories, and in fact something that our very own Black Dove Kiera Knightley – encouraging to see someone we thought was basically eye-candy delivering an emotionally complex and challenging performance – comes up with at an excruciating moment. Black Doves, though a very good story and much enhanced by the palpable on-screen chemistry of Knightley and Ben Wishaw as a conflicted gay ‘trigger man’, is way outclassed by Le Bureau, as is pretty much everything else on TV.
And the real – the bitter – disappointment is ‘The Agency’, the remake aforesaid. It seems the producers and writers have sat down and said to themselves: ‘Now, how can we take all the emotional complexity and moral ambivalence out of this story and just do a straightforward spy thriller?’ The whole point of the story – the protagonist’s inevitable betrayal of his country, the love of his life, his family and himself – is so severely underplayed as to be practically unnoticeable. It isn’t helped by Fassbender’s wooden rigidity, another actor for whom the great Time Out critic’s takedown of Richard Gere in I forget what 1980s movie – ‘He phones in his performance from the wardrobe department’ – might have been invented. It so happens Gere himself appears in this unimpressive bunch of clichés, playing the CIA Big Cheese without a hint of authenticity or mature characterisation.
The plodding script explains every move, rarely leaving the viewer in that ‘WTF’ mode so beloved of spy thriller watchers. Matthieu Kassovitz, the French actor who plays Fassbender’s counterpart in Le Bureau, is mysterious, contradictory, secretive (obviously), but still somehow loveable, because he is passionate to boot – for his lover, his daughter and eventually yes, his country. Fassbender, at least in this rendition, shows no understanding of passion, and ‘The Agency’ shows no emotional depth. It is a story – not its own – Americanised. Take out the subtlety, boys in the writers’ room, and it’ll sell.
A friend of mine’s dad or stepdad or great uncle or whoever (this is the world of intelligence) who was in MI6 knows the French version, likes it, but says: ‘The funny thing is, the French were never that good.’ In ‘The Agency’ it’s difficult to believe how spectacularly bad the spooks are at spooking. They constantly get ‘made’ while following, they fumble and muddle … and as far as I understand it, this is supposed to be the valhalla of spooks, the CIA. The incompetence isn’t a subtle twist in the story, a spark for a subplot; it’s just how it’s written, as if the writers think spies not knowing how to follow people is commonplace.
Granted, Le Bureau has 50 episodes under its belt so it’s perhaps unjust to compare, but nonetheless after seven of ‘The Agency’ you get a pretty good idea. Take the locations for instance; a production design element which also, obviously, feeds into the choice of villains. An early plot line in Le Bureau is the tracking down of a French-born ISIS leader and internet executioner, and villain-wise, we have mostly shockingly cruel Islamic fanatics – until we get to the Russians. Middle Eastern locations – Iran, Iraq, Syria – are desolate, inimical, vast, terrifying. ‘The Agency’ (whose nasties are Ethiopian or Sudanese, a safer plot choice) takes six episodes out of seven to get out of London, for God’s sake. I love London location-spotting, but aren’t we supposed to believe this is an international counter-terrorist organisation? After six episodes, black cabs, red buses and the Shard simply won’t do.
Shame to see Black Doves’ final scenes flop and flounder into Christmas-shaped sentimentality. As you would expect, Le Bureau’s five harrowing seasons end with exactly what you knew would happen from the first few moments of Season 1, Episode 1. The dread never dies. In real life there’s no such thing as a happy ending because there’s no such thing as an ending.
One perhaps negative point, which also serves for Black Doves and the outstanding Jeff Bridges / John Lithgow thriller ‘The Old Man’ on FX – the plots turn on the emotional attachment of hero to loved one. I’m trying hard here not to buzz the spoiler alert, but suffice it to say, a truly properly trained agent / hero renounces everything – family, friends, lovers. No attachments, because attachments of any sort are pressure points, hinges for blackmail. Betrayal of your country to save a lover’s (or family member’s) life? My instinct is that wouldn’t wash in the real spook world. Nonetheless, as a plot device, it makes for the best things on TV by a very long chalk. Just don’t waste your time on ‘The Agency’.
Le Bureau des Légendes: 98 / 100
The Old Man: 89 / 100
Black Doves: 82/100
The Agency: 35 / 100.
Aidan Walker 