The Night Agent

Hong Chau and Gabriel Basso stand out on "The Night Agent," a Shawn Ryan thriller based on Matthew Quirk's novel.

Still, it’s a pleasure to see a show better than it might have been, when so often the opposite is true: “The Night Agent” sparks with curiosity and intrigue, a richly detailed show that propels viewers forward with a relentless pace. So it is with “The Night Agent,” created by Shawn Ryan of “The Shield,” and based on a novel by Matthew Quirk. [Hong Chau](https://variety.com/t/hong-chau/) — the Oscar-nominated actor, who’s appeared in “The Whale,” “The Menu,” and “Downsizing” — is an interesting element on [Netflix](https://variety.com/t/netflix/)’s new series “ [The Night Agent](https://variety.com/t/the-night-agent/),” and a revealing one.

In one of those odd juxtapositions that come with the streaming age, a new Netflix drama about an FBI agent in the White House, "The Night Agent," has a ...

Charles Dance (“Game of Thrones”) also enters the chat in the later episodes, but by then, “Rabbit Hole” is already confusing enough that it’s barely worth the effort to try sorting things out. Netflix courts various audience niches, but this more closely approximates the meat-and-potatoes fare that has found success on more traditional platforms. That includes warnings from the President’s chief of staff, Diane Farr (Hong Chau, fresh off her Crisply told and smartly cast, the adaptation of Matthew Quirk’s novel issues a call worth answering. Perhaps inevitably, there are some clunkier aspects. [ “24”-like franchise](https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/entertainment/24-legacy-review/index.html) with “The Night Agent,” a twisty thriller with high-stakes corruption reaching deep into the corridors of Washington and a stalwart FBI agent who suffers for our sins.

Netflix's latest twisty thriller series begins with FBI agent Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) preventing mass loss of life after he spots a bomb being placed ...

For her role in catching the bad guys, Chelsea is offered the top job of being one of the President's personal Secret Service agents. In their bunker, Maddie finally realises just what a sleazeball her father is, and decides to leave him there and take her chances with the bomb above ground. Meanwhile, Rose and Peter have convinced Farr to help them, after she realises her fellow conspirators have gone rogue and are planning to kill not just Zadar, but the President as well. By the end of the penultimate episode, Maddie has been rescued and she and Chelsea are reluctantly en route with Maddie's extremely suspicious-looking father to Camp David, where the President is due to meet Zadar for a friendly chat. So they're off to Camp David, too, to hopefully foil the plot, save the President and clear Peter's name. On the other end is tech expert Rose, who has just seen her aunt and uncle murdered in their home by unknown assailants, and now they are after her.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. In the new Netflix series "The Night Agent," Gabriel Basso plays a young FBI agent stuck in a dead-end job who ...

And this "The Night Agent" does provide. And if you want to learn more about how we put the show together and learn more about our producers and what they're paying attention to, subscribe to our free newsletter. You can tell the upbeat tale of reporters exposing the truth about Watergate in "All The President's Men." GROSS: John Powers reviewed "The Night Agent," the new series streaming on Netflix. I got a kick out of the toxic relationship between the spineless Veep and the daughter who despises him. In the new Netflix series "The Night Agent," Gabriel Basso plays a young FBI agent stuck in a dead-end job who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a huge conspiracy. Alas, like most so-called political thrillers - the recent Apple TV+ series "Liaison" is another example - "The Night Agent" never rises above formula. Are you ready to do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this muck, to keep Rose Larkin safe? And that was enough to keep me watching happily until the very end. It was Rose who made that late-night call to the night action desk as assassins were murdering her secret agent aunt and uncle. You can spoof it the way "The Manchurian Candidate" sent up anti-communist frenzy. Me, I'm hooked on thrillers whose heroes get caught up in treacherous political shenanigans - you know, the attempted military coup in "Seven Days In May," the assassination corporation in the "Parallax View" or the many delirious intrigues that fueled "Homeland."

Gabriel Basso, Luciane Buchanan, D.B. Woodside and Hong Chau star in Shawn Ryan's adaptation of Matthew Quirk's novel.

But the first episode established that it’s a show with a lot of stock characters and a conspiracy that doesn’t start in a particularly interesting way. The biggest intrigue might be with Ellen (Eve Harlow) and Dale (Phoenix Raei), whom we see executing someone in Racine, WI at the end of the first episode. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere. Our Take: There’s a certain amount of lunkheadedness that envelops the first episode of The Night Agent, more than you’d expect from a show written by Ryan. Maybe that’ll inject some personality into the series, but in the run up to that, all we see are flat line readings and action scenes. He does keep her safe, but not before dealing with conspiracy theorists outside his apartment and a car chase going the wrong way down a local highway. He also seems to be in a loyalty tug-of-war between White House chief of staff Diane Farr (Hong Chau) and his FBI boss, Deputy Director Jamie Hawkins (Robert Patrick). She is staying with her aunt and uncle, who just came back from a business trip. Peter answers and talks her through hiding from the gunmen until law enforcement gets there. As he’s getting treated for his injuries, he spots the man who left the bomb, chases him into an alley, but loses him when a car slams into him. [The Shield](https://decider.com/show/the-shield/), is now adapting [Matthew Quirk’s novel The Night Agent](https://www.amazon.com/Night-Agent-Novel-Matthew-Quirk/dp/0062875469?tag=decider08-20&asc_refurl=https://decider.com/2023/03/23/the-night-agent-netflix-review/&asc_source=web) for Netflix. The Gist: On the Metro train, one of the passengers, FBI agent Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) notices a man leave a backpack and get off the train.

ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to The Night Agent star Hong Chau about Netflix's political thriller series, which is now streaming.

It was a situation where I relied quite a bit on the writers to remind me of who knows what. It’s also interesting when a show does choose to veer from the book, because then you think, “Oh, okay, well this is where they wanted to go with it.” Then it sort of raises a lot of questions like, “Okay, why did they choose to do that as opposed to this?” I think that’s probably something that ends up being more interesting to me: what they choose to leave in and what they choose to take out. I think it was just about reminding myself, whenever we would start filming, what the stakes were and what had just happened, and who knows what. What went into your portrayal of a politician and somebody that’s so deep into the White House? [laughs] It was all up to Gabe [Basso] and Luciane [Buchanan], but I personally enjoy watching these things myself, so it was fun to finally get to be a part of one. I was a fan of his previous shows — Terriers, The Shield.

SPOILER ALERT: The series includes details about new Netflix series The Night Agent, based on the bestselling novel by Matthew Quirk. Gabriel Basso in 'The ...

RYAN: I really don’t want to say too much because I do occupy a somewhat unique position in that I’ve been part of the previous five negotiations, and the last time I was around, I was co-chair of the negotiating committee so I do know that my words carry extra weight. I think these are all questions that we almost certainly would love to answer in a potential Season 2, and I certainly hope we get the opportunity to do that. But one of the things that happens in thriller movies when they try to forge a romance is they usually seem rushed, and it to me doesn’t seem earned. I don’t want to tell this specific story over five seasons, I want to tell this specific story in one season and give some satisfaction to the audience that they see how things turn out. What I will tell you is that the initial pitch for this show that we sold to Netflix was that each season would tell its own, mostly self-enclosed, a beginning, middle and end story, and any future seasons would include a few but not most of the characters that we saw in the previous season. But that was the story we set out to tell, and we told it. If it was confusing to you as a viewer, then I have to re-examine that, but that’s the rationale for why she did what she did. She was very young, and she was worried that maybe she, as a person, was a little young for the role, especially playing a contemporary of the President. As it relates to the President, again, I had the story in mind about the Vice President and his daughter in college. In the book, the mole in the White House is Russian, and so is the assassin, which is not the case in the series. In a book, you can put the readers into the heads of the characters and you understand what they’re thinking, why they’re behaving. I told Sony, I want this to be a project I do, and then I said, I really don’t want to pitch this.

During this week's 'TV's Top 5' podcast, the five-time member of the WGA's negotiating committee opens up about the dangers of mini-rooms, not investing in ...

I always believe that investing in writers and investing in writers through production is one of the best investments you can make it a TV show. I believe that a major reason the strike happened in 2007 was that the companies couldn’t agree among themselves what to do about the internet and future streaming. I insist on it for all of my shows because I know that whatever money we’re spending on a writer, that writer is going to save multiples of that in efficiencies. One of the reasons why I left and went to Sony in the first place was it appealed to me that I can approach the creative first and then work to figure out where the best place to sell it rather than being pressured to service an in-house buyer. We were trying to make a deal with the AMPTP but they represent different companies that may have different priorities and different instincts about how the negotiations can go. We know the time is beneficial to the creative but is there an economic impact for writers when it takes this long to get a show on the air? I never thought it belonged there but I had a sister studio that was insisting that it that it be first presented to its sister network, the sister network wanted it. I did a Beverly Hills Cop [pilot for CBS](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/shawn-ryan-beverly-hills-cop-589340/) that that wasn’t picked up for political reasons — not for quality reasons — by a guy who has now been [thoroughly exposed](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/les-moonves-accused-sex-crimes-violence-by-more-women-1141436/) to the industry. We raise a lot of questions in the first couple episodes of The Night Agent and we will give you the answers to those questions. Maybe this is my broadcast upbringing, but I think you can make things that are really good and that appeal to a lot of people. I don’t eat cheeseburgers in real life — I eat cheese, I eat meat, but I don’t eat them together — so for me, we tried to make it a really good show. The thing that made it personal for me was that I love the idea that Peter was a man who had unanswered questions about his deceased father.

The 10-part series is based on a novel of the same name by Matthew Quirk and sees a low level FBI agent, Peter Sutherland, working in the basement of The White ...

[said](https://twitter.com/EugeniaLoli/status/1638912316187230211): "Just binged most of the The Night Agent episodes on Netflix. [tweeted](https://twitter.com/keey_unusual/status/1639003319908614144): "The Night Agent is a must watch, the best series to ever happen on Netflix in my opinion. I’m on episode two but I’m hooked!!!"

We review the new Shawn Ryan spy action Netflix series The Night Agent starring Gabriel Basso and Luciane Buchanan.

It is a shame because there is a spark now and then in this series, mostly from Basso in action mode and Buchanan the rest of the time, that could have worked in a stronger series. The latest in a string of disappointing original productions, The Night Agent could easily be mistaken for a network television series if it were not for the profanity. The Night Agent struggles with any humor and instead opts to present this series as a more traditional action drama in the vein of 24 or the Jason Bourne films. That series relied on humor to offset the violence and action involved in the terrorism and conspiracy plots. Working his post, Sutherland is in charge of the intake of emergency calls from agents in the field when he receives a call from Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan), a former CEO of a cybersecurity company whose aunt and uncle appear to be undercover agents. Despite solid chemistry from the leads and a couple of surprising supporting performances, The Night Agent is a ploddingly dull series that fails to capitalize on the talented actors on screen by placing them into a predictable and overlong origin story that could have worked better as a feature film.

Gabriel Basso stars as FBI operative Peter Sutherland, tasked with manning a helpline for undercover spies (night agents) in the basement of the White ...

Night agents are operatives working for “Night Action”, assigned directly by the US president to look into a matter involving national security. Whether Sutherland becomes a night agent and who has infiltrated the White House will be revealed over the course of the ten episodes of the series available now on Netflix. According to Netflix companion site Tudum, the story follows a low-level FBI agent who works nights in the basement of the White House manning a phone line for undercover spies that never rings. Who is in the cast for The Night Agent? We have taken a closer look at who is involved and what is going on in the White House. A new recruit to the spy thriller genre has premiered on Netflix this week in the form of The Night Agent offering an insight into the world of US espionage from an underdog’s perspective.

The series, based on Matthew Quirk's bestselling book, follows FBI agent Peter Sunderland (played by Gabriel Basso) who is plunged into a deep, political ...

Who might star in The Night agent season 2? What might be the storyline on The Night Agent season 2? What is The Night Agent about?