There’s been a lot of glee and excitement about the demise of Netflix within the last couple of years from some people in the media. It’s understandable why some people would believe that will happen. Netflix has amassed tons of debts and they lost subscribers instead of gaining more. Yet despite all the noise about their potential demise, they’re still the biggest streaming service in the world. In 2021, they released Squid Game, which became a worldwide sensation and made tons of money. Last year, Stranger Things, Season 4 was a massive hit and in my opinion, the best season yet. Also, their film All Quite on The Western Front was nominated for several categories at the Oscars last year. So, all this talk of their demise was a bit exaggerated.

Their newest show, The Night Agent, was released a few weeks ago and it quickly became another smash hit for the streaming giant. Based on the book of the same name written by Matthew Quirk, this is basically Netflix’s answer to Amazon’s Jack Ryan series. It’s a fast 10-episode series and you’ll able to binge it in a few days.

As the story begins, a low-level FBI agent named Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) was on a Washington, DC Metro train on his way home when it was bombed. A year later, Sutherland got demoted and is now working at the Night Action desk in the basement of the White House; on the overnight shift, he analyzes reports and takes calls from a special phone. We learned that even though he saved lives and survived the bombing, there are people inside the government and conspiracy theorists in the outside world who think he’s somehow involved in the bombing. The reason why some believe he’s involved is that his late father was accused of being a traitor and selling sensitive government information to our enemies, but he died before he can prove his innocence. Sutherland now reports to both the White House Chief of Staff Diane Farr (Hong Chau) and his FBI boss, Deputy Director Jamie Hawkins (Robert Patrick). Farr seems to be the only person within the government that believes Sutherland is a patriot and not involved in the bombing and who basically saved his career at the FBI.

Then we’re introduced to Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan) a young CEO of an online security protection tech company that went under after she couldn’t stop cyberattacks on her clients and her funding dried up. She must declare bankruptcy and is staying with her aunt and uncle, who just came back from a business trip. But in the middle of the night, the power goes out, and two assassins come in. They give Rose a number, code words, and instructions to run. While her aunt and uncle tried to fight off the assassins, Rose calls the Night Action phone, and Sutherland answers and talks her through hiding from the assassins until law enforcement gets there. Farr then orders Sutherland to take Rose to a safe location until she can be debriefed the next day.

During the briefing, Farr notified Rose that her aunt and uncle were killed and that they were working for the government. They’re known as The Night Agents, working on super-secret missions that only the President of the US and few people within the government know about. Still shocked by the news about her aunt and uncle, Rose believes her life is in danger since she saw the face of one of the assassins. Farr wants her to be under the projection of secret service agents, but Rose insists that Sutherland be part of the protection team. As the story progresses, both Sutherland and Rose can’t trust anyone since both of their lives are now in danger. They not only must find out who ordered the assassination of Rose’s aunt and uncle but also must stop another potential bombing in Washington DC. Along the way, they found help from secret service agents Chelsea Arrington (Fola Evans-Akingbola) and Erik Monks (D.B. Woodside), both of whom are being assigned to protect the daughter of the Vice President of the US.

The person in charge of the show is Shawn Ryan, who became a well-known producer in the TV world when he oversaw another show called The Shields. Ryan was also credited as a writer in a few of the episodes of this series. I’ve never read the book that’s based on, so I can’t make any comparisons to the original source material. While this isn’t anything new when it comes to the plot, it kept my attention and when an episode ends, I wanted to watch the next one right away.

Performances were decent all around. The two leads, Basso and Buchanan, didn’t really have good chemistry in the first couple of episodes. But as the series goes on, they became comfortable with each other. Now, that may have been the goal of the showrunners, since these were two total strangers, they weren’t supposed to click right away. Unlike other shows or movies in this genre, it’s very grounded so Basso’s character wasn’t a super-agent like Jason Bourne, James Bond, or Ethan Hunt. With his 6-foot and muscular frame, he’s believable as an action hero yet he’s still gotten his butt whooped a few times.

Buchanan’s Rose got the same amount of screen time as Basso and she’s not the typical damsel in the distress. With her background in tech, she’s the brain and Basso’s the brawn. She even came to his rescue a few times. Chau’s character is the third lead and was probably written for a white actress. But Chau was pretty good as someone who you can’t really trust. Her character kind of reminded me of Pamela Landy from the two Jason Bourne films.

Netflix probably didn’t have much faith in this show since it looked cheap compared to their other series. The show only contained small-scale action scenes, the big finale was kind of a letdown, and you can tell it was supposed to be something bigger, but they didn’t have the money to shoot a large-scale action scene. Now that the show became a hit, I assume Netflix won’t have issues spending more money on season 2. Despite its cheap production, this is still a good, fast-paced action thriller show that you can finish in one weekend.

Have you seen The Night Agent? Let us know what you think!

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