People talk a lot about “Wednesday,” “Stranger Things,” even “Squid Game,” but one of the most successful shows in the history of the most successful streaming company has been Shawn Ryan’s propulsively entertaining “The Night Agent,” the most-watched show of 2023, and one of the best current shows of its kind. Yes, every season, including today’s new one is logically bananas. The latest mission features a conspiracy that goes all the way to the White House and, if true, would make international headlines around the world, but it’s so confidently made and so remarkably paced that one suspends disbelief just to see what happens next. Buoyed by the best ensemble of new supporting players for the show to date, the third season of “The Night Agent” is arguably the best. After a rocky pair of opening episodes, it settles in for what is basically an 8-chapter action film, and one that argues that the true villains of this world aren’t the low-level players who commit acts of violence but the high-level ones who fund terrorism for political profit.
The nearly Hitchcockian premise of the first season of “The Night Agent,” wherein an average agent gets a fateful call in the middle of the night that thrusts him into an international conspiracy, is largely gone. Which is not a problem. You can’t cast Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) as “the good guy in over his head” for long without the repetition getting ridiculous. The first season of “The Night Agent” does linger as the inciting incident that thrust this decent man into a web of indecent villains. Answering that phone call tied him to Rose Larkin (whose absence isn’t as notable as last season) enough that he chose to protect her by selling part of his soul to an intelligence broker named Jacob Monroe (a very good Louis Herthum). At the start of season three, a terrorist act pushes him into a situation where he thinks he can finally get Monroe in a position to turn him over to Catherine Weaver (Amanda Warren) and her team. He’s very wrong about that thinking.
His mission to take down Monroe leads Peter into the life of Isabel De Leon (Genesis Rodriguez), a financial reporter who believes she has connected the dots between acts of terrorism and those who are paying for them. Peter and Isabel are contacted by a financial analyst named Jay (Suraj Sharma), who is the first to uncover some suspicious transactions, but that knowledge places him in the crosshairs of Monroe and his people.
While all of this is going down, “The Night Agent” tracks a few other eventually intersecting plotlines, deftly moving between them as the show progresses. In one, we’re reunited with Chelsea Arrington (Fola Evans-Akingbola, getting her best season to date), who is not only newly engaged but now the Head of Security for the First Family, including President Ward Horton (Richard Hagan) and First Lady Jenny Hagan (Jennifer Morrison). When Chelsea is involved in a shooting at the White House, she begins suspect that POTUS and FLOTUS are hiding something because of course they are.
Two other new faces make notable impacts this season. “True Blood” star Stephen Moyer is effective as a hired gun known only as “The Father” because he happens to travel with his young son, who he’s trying to keep unaware of dad’s real job. (Why he’d be traveling with him and trying to keep him in the dark will become apparent in ways a plot synopsis in a review can’t convey. Don’t worry.) Moyer alternates well from icy assassin to warm father in an effective performance.
Even better is “ER” vet David Lyons (also recently good in “The Beast in Me”) as Adam, a Night Agent assigned by the President to work with and protect Sutherland. This show’s 007 can sometimes be a bit of a drag, always intensely brooding his way through each case, and Lyons balances that nicely with a bit more of a world-weary sense of humor. They make an effective duo for most of the season.
Well-cast, well-paced, and well-written, the only places in which “The Night Agent” stumbles slightly is in the classic Netflix one of bloating. The first couple episodes struggle so much to find the rhythm that they probably should have been one, and later chapters battle the classic Netflix issue of repetitive over-exposition, although never enough to sink the show overall.
“The Night Agent” doesn’t break new ground, but not every show needs to do that. If “The Pitt” has taught us anything, it’s that there’s an appetite for old-fashioned dramatic structures that are done well. This one doesn’t rise to the levels of that HBO hit, but it does what it sets out to do remarkably well. It values escapist entertainment above all else. Could it take stronger political stances? Sure. Could it make more sense when you think back on it? Probably. But the important thing is that these questions don’t linger while you’re watching it, which is the definition of well-done escapism, programming that pushes away the world and criticisms of it.
Just as “The Pitt” posits a world where decent people do their best against broken systems, this one scratches that timeless itch wherein we want to see good men and women fighting against the corruption that’s tearing apart this world, often literally with their fists. Peter Sutherland exists on the same spectrum as Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer, men willing to sacrifice personal need for a greater good. It’s no wonder it’s a gigantic hit. We’re all hoping that when things really go down, there will be a Peter Sutherland there to answer the call.
Whole season screened for review. Now on Netflix.
