By: Bill Cushing – 7/23
‘The Night Agent,’ an exciting new political action-thriller, is slick and fun and with an increasing list of action-thrillers on streaming, this is definitely one of the more memorable ones. It is my recommendation for this month.
The series opens with a terrorist attack on the subway. FBI Agent Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) is on the train when he sees someone leave a bag behind and get off. Peter checks the bag and finds a bomb. He leaps into action, pulling the emergency brake on the train and gets as many people off the train as he can before the bomb explodes.
For all of his heroics, Peter is branded a suspect in the bombing and gets demoted to a thankless job in the basement of the White House during the graveyard shift.
You see, Peter’s father was also an agent and was accused of treason. So, Peter is guilty by association and gets banished to the depths of the White House. His main job is to answer an emergency telephone line designed as a hotline for agents in the field when something very serious has happened.
It’s only to be used in an absolute emergency when an agent can’t reach his handler or fears they may have been compromised. The phone barely ever rings. So, his once promising career has now become this uneventful drag. Until he gets a call that changes all of that.
He gets a phone call from a woman named Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan), who was given the number plus a code by her aunt and uncle before they were killed. Turns out that Rose’s aunt and uncle weren’t the boring suburbanites that she thought they were. They were actually undercover operatives who stumbled onto something big and they fear that their covers have been blown. Rose also says she overheard a conversation about both an upcoming terrorist attack and a mole in the White House.
Peter believes Rose and Diane Farr (Oscar nominee Hong Chau), the president’s chief of staff, believes Peter, but Peter’s FBI boss (Robert Patrick) isn’t so sure. And this all happens in the first episode.
‘The Night Agent’ with its spectacular action and chase scenes, the twisty plot and the well-portioned pacing, entertains the audience with its fast-paced and exciting story and keeps the attention riveted.
The series strives to keep the viewer entertained and keep them watching and guessing, and it accomplishes that feat very well.
Netflix realized that they had an immediate hit on their hands when the series had a huge debut, with about 168.71 million hours viewed within the first few days, and ‘The Night Agent’ was renewed for a second season less than a week after it was released.
Created by Shawn Ryan (The Shield) and based on the 2012 novel of the same name by Matthew Quirk, ‘The Night Agent’ is exciting, addicting, and successfully able to balance a storyline that could have easily become over-complicated. With 10 episodes, each clocking in around 45 to 50 minutes, it is definitely a good candidate for your next binge watch.
All 10 episodes are now available to stream on Netflix.
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