by Jeff Alan, Contributing Writer
In the world of streaming and content being released rapidly, it can be difficult for shows with less star power to get the exposure needed to wrangle an audience. But in the case of Netflix’s newest British limited series, Treason, not even exposure can help bring this show into the conversation.
When the head of MI6, Sir Martin Angelis (Ciarán Hinds), is dangerously poisoned by a mysterious woman, his deputy, Adam Lawrence (Charlie Cox), is thrust into the role and must take on all his responsibilities, including finding the culprit of the attempted attack. When Angelis becomes conscious and Adam visits him in the hospital, he notices a stack of books on his bedside table that Angelis notes that he got as a gift from Adam which he had not sent.
The books turn out to be a hidden message to a meeting point, and when Adam goes to the meeting point, he finds the mysterious woman is who he knows to be a friend and former lover named Kara (Olga Kurylenko), a former SVR agent who currently works privately. As they talk, she reveals to him that she was the one who poisoned Angelis to bring Adam to the head of MI6 to call in a favor he owes her. He flat out denies her intentions and storms away.
At the same time, Adam’s wife Maddy (Oona Chaplin) meets with a military friend of hers named Dede (Tracy Ifeachor), who claims to be on vacation in the U.K., but her intentions are not as innocent as she claims. Dede is seen meeting with a CIA team sent to help her keep an eye on Adam in his new role as head of MI6.
One night when he and his family are at the theater, Adam gets a call from Kara, who claims she has information on a bombing that is to be taking place in the next 24 hours, and she can get him the intelligence if he gets her files from an old mission in Baku that resulted in the loss of five men in her unit 15 years ago. Reluctantly, he agrees and they exchange information, but Adam’s information is scarce upon discovery. When Adam is back in his office, he discovers that his daughter has been abducted, and his first suspect is Kara, thinking that this is her retaliation for getting her weak intelligence.
After sending a team after Kara, and her evading them just in time, she tells Adam that she does not have his daughter and is willing to help bring her home. In exchange, she wants more intelligence on another subject, and he agrees. Meanwhile, Dede reveals her intentions to Maddy and coerces her into spying on Adam to get more information about Kara.
Adam is able to get the files Kara wants and they exchange information. Maddy sneaks up on them to get photographic evidence of Kara and sees them embrace. Kara tells Adam where to find his daughter, he departs, and Maddy goes back to their car. With his daughter back at home, Adam feels compelled to divulge the information to a trusted colleague he works with, explaining the entire situation to them and asking what his options are. The colleague says that he is potentially facing treason charges and the only way he may be able to get out of it is to hand over Kara or connect Kara to his former boss or he will go to jail for the rest of his life.
I want to start by saying that this is not a bad show. It’s actually shot very well, and the acting is perfectly fine. However, the story is straightforward and often disinteresting. For a show about spies and double crosses, this limited series is quite predictable and doesn’t take very many risks. The “twists” are not surprising, and are easy to spot if you’ve seen any other kind of double cross movie before, not to mention there are several other movies that deal with spies and double crosses that do it significantly better than this.
I also don’t think this is well-fitted to be a limited series. I think you could have trimmed out a bit more to the plot this would have worked as a movie. It would not have made the content much better, sadly enough. I think the lack of originality would have still been the leading reason as to why this is an overall skip. I looked forward to this because I was really looking forward to watching Charlie Cox in a new property that wasn’t Marvel-related, being that that’s all I really know him in currently. Unfortunately, even his passable performance isn’t enough to help bring this series to mainstream attention. Overall, I am just let down and underwhelmed at the swing and miss that Treason turned out to be.
Score: 4/10
Treason is currently streaming on Netflix
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