REVIEW
Treason, Netflix, review: rollicking spy drama doesn't
stop to check if it makes sense
3/5
Russian spies, double-crossing British spooks, a
baby-faced head of MI6 - this 100mph thriller is loopy, self-serious and a lot
of fun
By
Jasper Rees
22 December
2022 • 6:00am
In recent
years, thrillers about the British state have asked us to swallow some
totteringly tall stories. The Home Secretary who has a hot affair with her
bodyguard. The secret agency that frames its victims with faked-up video
footage. How about this from Treason (Netflix): the newly installed head of
MI6, the one in charge of that big ugly building by Vauxhall Bridge in London,
is a double agent working for the Russians and nobody seems to have noticed.
Too
far-fetched? What makes Adam Lawrence (Charlie Cox) even more wildly
implausible is his über-youth. The nation’s new chief spy is easily young
enough to be his own protégé. He’s also handsome in a stubbly yet somehow
clean-cut way. You can see him as one of a superannuated boyband, reuniting in
their late 30s to rake it on the road. The Spooky Boys, perhaps. It’s easy to
imagine him at a photoshoot. A shoot-out, less so.
Anyway,
Lawrence has been elevated to his new role after his boss, Sir Martin Angelis
(Ciarán Hinds in full dastard mode), is poisoned at his club by a rogue Russian
operative, Kara Yerzov (Olga Kurylenko, who first did this sort of thing
wearing a gown in Quantum of Solace). Sir Martin is a dealer in kompromat, a
bulging cache of intel on the peccadilloes of the higher-ups that enables him
to bend them to his will: a Supreme Court judge here, a Foreign Secretary (Alex
Kingston) there. So we know he’s a rotten apple from the off. But who else is?
Lawrence
has his own skeletons which date back 15 years to five deaths in Baku. Before
you can blurt “why on earth are the Russians and, hello, the Americans so
interested in, if you will, his Baku story?”, that’s exactly what is playing
out. No one on screen seems to believe anyone else: friendships and marriages
and political alliances are all part of a complex and shifting cat’s cradle of
every-which-way distrust.
This isn’t
good news on the domestic front. Lawrence’s teenage daughter, Ella (Beau
Gadsdon), manages to slip away from her (evidently crap) security detail and
soon finds herself kidnapped. “Everything is alright,” Lawrence keeps
reassuring his second wife, Mattie (Oona Chaplin). Fortunately his missus is a
veteran of Afghanistan, which may just come in handy a few episodes down the
pipe.
The script,
which plays out in five craftily plotted episodes, is by Matt Charman. You may
recall him as the young playwright who was edging into TV before a screenplay
of his about swapping spies in the Cold War reached Steven Spielberg, who asked
the Coen brothers to sprinkle further fairy dust on it. In this, Charman’s
first significant work since Bridge of Spies, it’s possible to guess what the
Coens may have brought to the party: an indefinable charm, a seductive wit
that, on his own among spies, Charman has no time for.
Instead he
has plenty to say about Russian meddling in the British body politic – in
particular a Lebedev-like figure who is bankrolling a would-be prime minister.
This would have looked more searingly up-to-date before the invasion of
Ukraine, mention of which has been parachuted into the script.
But the
business of making this story look like it belongs in the here and now on the
whole plays second fiddle to pace. Nor does the story hang around worrying
about drag-anchor stuff like feelings. People look scared or worried or brave
as and when required. But never for long. When a big death happens, there isn’t
even time to mourn. This is a plot in a hurry to deliver, which – if you can
accept a Pop Idol contestant as head of MI6 – it pretty much does.
Treason is
available to watch on Netflix from Boxing Day
Review
Treason review – say hello to TV’s cuddliest spy
Gripping as this fun, frenetic espionage thriller is,
its lead isn’t exactly a hard nut. Think cheerful lectures to schoolkids and
channelling the personality of a lovely labrador …
Stuart
Heritage
@stuheritage
Mon 26 Dec
2022 06.00 GMT
Although
just about every actor on the face of the Earth has enjoyed a stint as the
frontrunner to play the next Bond, Charlie Cox seems to be the sole exception.
Despite
sharing an age, a gender and a race with every screen Bond so far – not to
mention a handy sideline as a superhero given that he plays Daredevil in the
Marvel cinematic universe – for some reason he hasn’t quite made the cut.
The reason,
it seems, is Treason (Netflix). A big part of the Potential 007 audition
sequence is to play someone slightly Bondy on the small screen, as Tom
Hiddleston did with The Night Manager and James Norton did with McMafia.
It’s an
opportunity for them to dress the part, brood in a variety of opulent locations
and occasionally mess around with guns. Treason – a spy thriller written by the
Oscar-nominated co-writer of Bridge of Spies – sounds as if it should have been
cut from the exact same cloth.
And yet our
first meaningful introduction to Cox’s spy comes during a scene in a school
library where he cheerfully tells a bunch of primary-age kids what it’s like to
be a spy. Which, however you cut it, isn’t something you can imagine Daniel
Craig doing.
Indeed,
throughout the course of Treason, Cox is less an international man of mystery
and more a lovely labrador who has somehow gained the skill to operate a
humanoid robot.
But Cox is
no mere spy. Despite looking like a particularly meek supply teacher, he is in
fact second in command at MI6. And when his boss (Ciarán Hinds, thankfully
given slightly more to do than he was in The English) is incapacitated during
an errant whisky-poisoning accident, it falls to Cox to run the ship. This is
plainly ridiculous, since the man looks like his natural calling is to host a
CBeebies series about the importance of cuddles, but let’s go with it.
It is
extremely difficult to mention anything specific about the plot from this point
onwards because that would unravel the entire series, but it is safe to say
that things don’t go well. Hinds’s poisoner is Olga Kurylenko, who has a past
with Cox, and things get knottier and knottier until his whole family ends up
involved in the mess.
I can tell
you that the plot involves a full English of contemporary references –
kompromat, shady Russian lords, a Conservative leadership campaign – and that
the show is set in London, because this is one of those shows where scenes
don’t count unless there is an immediately recognisable central London landmark
in the middle of the screen. Any more than that would destroy the ride.
It’s a
pretty good ride, too. Treason manages that brilliant television trick of
sucking you in with its labyrinthine plot so effectively that you don’t realise
quite how stupid it is until long after the credits roll, at which point it
hits you like a ton of bricks. But, still, it has the air of unfulfilled
promise.
It’s weird,
in this age of Far Too Much Television, to wish that a show went on for longer,
but this is the case with Treason. It’s a five-part, fairly finite limited
series, but it feels as if it was set up to be something far more substantial.
What it
feels like, in fact, is one of those big old-fashioned American network shows
that ran for half a year at a time. One of those pacy, inexplicable spy
thrillers like 24 or Homeland that never managed to run out of complicated
conspiracies that went all ... the … way … to … the … top.
I dare say
I would have enjoyed Treason a lot more if this had been the case. Instead,
with less than four hours total running time, Treason hits all of its requisite
beats in nothing less than a blind panic.
Someone
gets abducted, but then they’re found before anyone has the chance to start
worrying. There’s a government mole, but that’s all sorted out with the wave of
a hand. If anyone seems in any way suspicious or mysterious, their true motives
are usually explained within a scene or two, so that the show doesn’t have to
drop its mad clatter to the finish line.
It’s fun,
but frustrating. A few more episodes spent with Labrador Bond and all his
stupid problems, and Treason could have been a belter.
.webp)
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