I’m
definitely warming up to The Assets. Now that the stage is set, things are getting
going, and it looks like it might be a fairly gripping ride – I’m reminded a
little of the first season of The Hour. It follows American spies in the ‘80s instead
of a British news team in the ‘50s, and I found The Hour more instantly engaging, but the miniseries is shaping up
into a nice period spy thriller with good suspense.
When a
KGB colonel decides to defect to the West, he confirms what Sandy has been
fearing: the presence of a mole within
the CIA. As they wait for the jittery
defector to reveal what he knows, the agency begins going through the files of
their active assets, trying to determine who would be most at risk of
exposure. Meanwhile, the mole debates
how to deal with the colonel.
I didn’t
mention it in my review of episode 1, but we the audience know pretty much from
the first who the mole is (as such, it’s not exactly a spoiler, but I’ll avoid
saying their name anyway,) and while Jodie Whittaker’s Sandy heads up one
branch of the plot, they lead the other.
As such, while the first episode focuses more squarely on Sandy’s side
of things, this one is a more even split between the two, emphasizing the
mole’s dread at having a defector on the premises, unsure of how much he really
knows.
But Sandy
gets in some good stuff as well. She’s
the one spearheading the efforts to ascertain the danger to their assets, and
through flashbacks to her initial grooming of a particular asset, we learn a
little more about her as a CIA officer.
She’s a shrewd study of human character, and while some of her colleagues
think she’s not wary enough toward possible new recruits, she recognizes
potential when she sees it and seems to have a good eye for sensing when to
invest in someone. Even if she knows
them mainly through their case files and the intelligence they send from the
other side of the Iron Curtain, she cares about these assets and wants to do
whatever is necessary to ensure that they’re not burned by the traitor within
the agency.
Another
familiar face, also British (I looked it up – apparently, The Assets was produced in the U.S. and originally aired on ABC,
but the cast is super British.) It’s none other than Noel Clarke, a.k.a.
Mickey from new Who! I love it when Who alumni are in other projects together, and it’s almost as fun
when they’re in a project with someone who later
goes on to be a part of Who, a la
Matt Smith having a guest appearance in Secret
Diary of a Call Girl with Billie Piper several years before he made his
debut as Eleven.
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