In "The Night Agent," a young, square-jawed FBI agent runs afoul of his bosses and is relegated to a desk job on the overnight shift in the basement of the White House. His purpose: to monitor an emergency phone line that never rings. And then one night it does.
The propulsive and smart 10-episode Netflix action-thriller series is based on the 2019 novel by Matthew Quirk. It's less "Jack Ryan," both in tone and interests, than "Three Days of the Condor," the 1975 political thriller starring Robert Redford as a guy who comes to the stomach-churning realization that he doesn't know whom he can trust.
But instead of a pensive and Redfordian leading man, "Night Agent" chucks all that for something more indicative of the 2020s.
Night agent Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) has the look of a former athlete who's now found himself in a job that requires a suit and tie. He's tall and stolid, with a military haircut. Not particularly interesting at first glance. Even his daddy issues feel like a pro forma personality trait.
But he's serious about the job, no matter how much he chafes at his banishment to the basement. He's observant and thoughtful and when that phone does ring one night, it's not an undercover FBI agent on the other line but a frantic civilian — an out-of-work cybersecurity expert named Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan), whose life is in danger.
Sutherland is your quintessential stand-up guy. Larkin's wary but clear-eyed and not just someone who needs saving. She's actively involved in uncovering what's happening and strategizing their next steps as they find themselves on the run from treasonous forces in the nation's top political office.
Also, the vice president's daughter (a college student at Georgetown) and her Secret Service agents somehow get pulled into this, complicating things further.
Created for television by Shawn Ryan ("The Shield"), the show is remarkably apolitical considering the setting. That's quite the tightrope walk, but one that fits with the direction streamers are heading.
"The Night Agent" features no major stars but there's a small handful of recognizable names: Robert Patrick, D.B. Woodside and recent Oscar-nominee Hong Chau, who plays the president's silver-haired chief of staff Diane Farr. It's a performance that's at once wily and deadpan.
Shot on location in and around Vancouver, a number of Canadian actors pop up here as well, including Gabrielle Rose as a retiree who lives out on a farm by herself, minding her own self-sufficient, not-a-spy business. In fact, she's done all kinds of spy-like work and knows a thing or two about uncovering saboteurs.
In terms of how the series is structured, Ryan has made some canny choices. "The Night Agent" is not self-serious. The story starts relatively small and gradually expands out into a larger over-the-top conspiracy, but the show actually earns it, because it understands the value of building stakes: bit by bit.
Conspiracies abound. Paranoia is justified. But the show remains human-scaled. There's no one big ticking clock hanging over their heads, so much as a time crunch here, a time crunch there. Everything is incremental, giving a richness to the storytelling.
