“My chosen career is a psychological tightrope walk over a pit of fire,” says a CIA spook, code-named Martian (played with steely intensity by Michael Fassbender) in the solemn spy drama The Agency, which recently premiered on the abominably branded Paramount+ with Showtime. Nearly as tormented about living a life that’s a lie is Helen Webb (a spirited Keira Knightley), the duplicitous heroine of Netflix‘s rollicking espionage romp Black Doves.
Helen works for a shadowy group (named Black Doves) that steals government secrets and sells to the highest bidder. “I have no idea who I am,” she laments to her best friend, Sam (the soulful and always welcome Ben Whishaw), a forlorn assassin who’s spent the last seven years in exile.
Obviously, theirs are not normal lives. And while both series take great pains to reveal the emotional and mental toll the spy game inflicts on those who choose to live with false identities for years on end, they go about it quite differently.
The Agency, based on the hit French drama The Bureau, is deadly serious in its chilly depiction of a spy who’s come in from the cold too suddenly—or more precisely, from the heat of Ethiopia, where he spent the last six years, during which he acquired a married lover (Jodie Turner-Smith). Her sudden arrival in London, where he’s now based, raises alarms.
Answering to stern chiefs played by Richard Gere (quite good) and Dominic West (an ocean away in Langley), the conflicted Martian struggles to balance his messy personal life with the demands of the trade. (“Hearts vs. job. Soul vs. duty” is how Gere puts it.) A crisis involving a missing agent, compromising vital missions in Ukraine and Russia, adds to his full plate of existential misery, which he’s forced to overshare with a visiting agency therapist (Harriet Sansom Harris, scoring in a rare detour from comedy).
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Way less cerebral, and more of a suspenseful gun-blazing hoot, Black Doves spins a violent web of intrigue around Helen, who’s spent the last decade gathering secrets as the outwardly adoring wife of the U.K.’s defense secretary (Broadchurch‘s Andrew Buchan), and she’s a supermom to boot. She’s also unfaithful, and her passionate affair with a civil servant ends badly when he’s executed in a wave of murders connected to the mysterious death of the Chinese ambassador.
Helen’s deceptively matronly overseer (the chameleon-like Sarah Lancashire of Happy Valley and Julia) is losing trust in this valuable asset, chagrined when the vengeful Helen goes rogue to get to the truth, exposing an underworld conspiracy. She drags triggerman Sam along for the wild and outrageously bloody ride, when all he wants to do is reconnect with the boyfriend he left behind after a thwarted hit backfired too close to home.
“Warm heart and blood on your hands, and that’s not a good combination,” a crime boss warns Sam. That may be true, but it makes for terrific TV.
The Agency, Sundays, 9/8c, (Streaming, Fridays), Paramount+ with Showtime
Black Doves, Series Premiere, Thursday (eight episodes), Netflix
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