The Night Agent
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An FBI agent working in a lonely secret office in the basement of the White House gets a phone call. A woman needs help right away. That's the beginning of The Night Agent, a Netflix spy thriller series full of action and intrigue. Created by The Shield's Sean Ryan, the series follows Peter and Rose, the agent and the tech expert he's protecting, as they try to uncover a conspiracy that goes right to the heart of the government.

The Night Agent just returned for a second season, so we thought it was a good time to revisit our conversation about the series. I'm Ayesha Harris. And I'm Linda Holmes. And in this encore episode of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about The Night Agent.

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It's just the two of us today. Let's get right to it. The Night Agent is based on a Matthew Cork novel and was created by Sean Ryan. As you may know, he was the showrunner not only of The Shield, but also of Terriers. He developed SWAT on CBS.

So he's been making TV for a long time for broadcast and cable and streaming. In the show, Gabriel Basso plays Agent Peter Sutherland, an FBI agent stationed in the basement of the White House monitoring a phone that basically never rings. Until one night, it does. On the other end is Rose, a young woman who's a computer security expert. She's terrified and she needs help and she's afraid someone is after her. She'll explain it all in time. Peter Sutherland,

Peter befriends Rose and the two of them end up trying to unravel a dangerous conspiracy that may even have its origins somewhere within the White House. Peter has the help of the president's chief of staff, played by the biggest name in the cast, the very busy and recently Oscar-nominated Hong Chao. Over 10 episodes, you get chases, shootouts, secret conversations, twists and turns, everything you would ask and would expect.

from a show of this kind. It's streaming on Netflix now. Aisha, I came to the team at Pop Culture Happy Hour saying, I really got sucked into this maybe a little bit more than I expected. What did you think of The Night Agent? It's a show that I think hits many of the familiar beats. And if you like those familiar beats or...

are the type of person who enjoys sort of these espionage thriller White House sort of things, you will find pleasure in it. I think it's perfectly fine. And I don't mean that necessarily as a dig. I think that the performances, people are very, very committed. There are little details I noticed, especially when it came to the action sequences that

The Peter character is very much like, you know, he's ripped. He can do what he needs to do. But also when he's getting in fights, getting in shootouts, or even just being chased or running after someone, he gets hurt. And it's believable in a way. The action will sometimes kind of

pause and kind of show, oh, this guy isn't just this perfect specimen who is invincible and nothing's going to happen to him. There's one scene where he falls through glass, like from a couple stories high, and you feel it. Take my hand. Come on. Are you okay?

it hurts and he's for the rest of that episode he is like limping like he's not invincible so I appreciated that there's a little bit of realism applied to especially like the action sequences of the parts that are a little might be more hard to believe but overall

Overall, I feel as though this isn't necessarily a show for me. And that's totally fine. You know, and obviously this was created by the same person who did SWAT. So it has that sort of grayscale network TV aesthetic to it where it's kind of like dour and drab. And some of the acting can lean towards feeling like it's straight out of like Law & Order. Yeah, a lot of wet, gritty streets. Yeah.

A lot of wet, gritty streets. Some characters who I think are less believable in some scenes where it just kind of feels like I'm watching an episode of SVU, a show I used to love and now have grown a little weary by. But overall, I think this is a pretty decent watch. It's 10 episodes. I think it's not necessarily elevating the genre.

but I enjoyed it enough to recommend it to anyone who really is into this kind of genre. Yeah. And see, I have this great fondness for what I often refer to as like 90s trench coat thrillers, which are very much this kind of story. Your Pelican Brief, some of those Grisham ones, but also some Harrison Ford movies were like this. And even like

older, you know, Gene Hackman was always in a lot of movies like this. These kind of like people sneaking around DC having secret conversations and you never know who you can trust. I love those stories and I really enjoyed this. I think you're exactly right that if you like this kind of story,

It's a really nice execution of exactly this kind of story. And I think what caught my attention about it was, you know, there is so much going on with streaming television, especially right now, that is resistant to the idea that it is television, that is resistant to the idea of episodic structure. And Sean Ryan is still a guy who I think believes fundamentally in television. Right.

And I think believes fundamentally in the idea of the episode, not the 10 hour movie. So you get these kind of structured episodes where they have a rise and fall to the conflict and,

because it's an ongoing series, it's meant to have the episode be like, oh no, I have to watch the next one. Which for me was really, really effective. I watched, I kid you not, I watched this entire thing in one day. Oh my goodness. To me, it was just pleasurable in that way. And I had a conversation, I'm going to credit my friend Alan Sepinwall, he's the TV critic at Rolling Stone. And he said, there is a kind of a con in the first episode that involves Baby.

And at the very end of the episode, there's a shot that shows you the baby. The baby is fine. And one of the things that Alan said was, Sean Ryan has been making television long enough that he understands that you have to provide that shot because people will be wondering whatever happened to the baby. Right.

And you have to tell people the baby is okay. And I, over and over and over, I felt Ryan as a creator giving you the information that you're supposed to have at different points in the story, which is part of being a writer of television. And I found myself...

sinking into kind of the rhythms of this genre, feeling like it was being given to me by someone who respects this kind of thing and is not being like, like you said, it's not really, I'm going to subvert this and make this totally different. I mean, this is like man and woman running, holding hands. Are they eventually going to make out? Oh, gee, maybe they're both hot and gorgeous. Um,

You know, are you going to eventually find out that there are treacherous people who are bad that aren't, you know, originally seem to be bad? Yeah. Of course. That's what this genre is. The other thing I will say that was so interesting, I actually followed up with Sean Ryan to verify that they did not shoot any of this in D.C. because it really looks like D.C. did a really good job. Yeah.

And I did appreciate the fact that it has a sense of place that is completely faked. It's all, I think, Vancouver or something like that. It's one of those Canadian cities, but it feels like D.C. And I appreciated that. To me, this is like, yeah, this is D.C. popcorn thriller, and I was totally into it. Yeah, well, that's what I mean by like this sort of dour grayscale. I'm sorry. But D.C., especially if you're there when it's overcast, it's just kind of gloomy and it feels...

for me at least, suffocating in many ways. And I got that sense from this show. Like you're supposed to feel... It's gritty reality of DC. It's gritty reality DC. I also really enjoy the 90s espionage thrillers. And I think the best of them...

are the ones that either are trying to subvert or say something a little bit different about our government and how it works, or are just completely bat crazy. Like what is going on here? Like Air Force One, it's kind of great. Like I enjoy that movie very much. And I feel as though this show kind of toes the line between the two and doesn't really quite get to the point where it feels

out of this world like it's being very weird scandal like and this show doesn't feel over the top and weird I also feel as though we kind of know from the very beginning who is bad not to what degree they are bad but the

The show tries to fake you out a few times and it's just like, no, come on. We know. But I think that's part of it. Like, I think in a way you're sort of supposed to be watching for a person for like various people in these kinds of stories to turn bad. Yeah. You're trying to be like, oh, I think that person's probably bad. And I will give you the whole thing about like these kinds of things work best when they're either very straightly dramatic, like an Alan Pakula movie or something like that, or they are, as you delicately said, bad.

bat crazy. You got to admit, Aisha, the very end of this is pretty bat crazy. Yes, yes, it is. If you describe to someone and then he does this and then he does this and then he does this, they'll be like, hmm.

That's true. And I will say, you know, I mentioned before, this is sort of like man and woman running and all that stuff. And it's true that he's the FBI agent and she's the endangered person. But I did appreciate the fact that she's the computer expert. So she's not just sort of like there to be protected. She does contribute to the, you know, the actual solving of all the problems.

thriller elements and stuff like that. Like he needs her to solve this also, despite the fact that there is some pretty familiar gender stuff around, you know, some of their interactions. Yeah. And I also think that she's kind of the viewer's ongoing skeptic of government and what they're doing in general, because she has a reason to be. Her aunt and uncle...

have been murdered and she needs to figure out what happened. And I think it's important to have that voice in this show because at the end of the day, all of these sort of White House-based stories

series, even though there's always some corruption, there's always some bad people. I mean, it's very similar to police procedurals. Like at the end of the day, there's still this tint of jingoism that occurs and is bubbling beneath the surface or sometimes it's very, very loud and open. Even though Peter has every reason to be upset with like most of the people in the White House, he's still committed to his country and still committed to fighting for it. Right. Which is like a tricky thing to balance. And

I have my feelings about it. I don't love it. But at the end of the day, it's lighthearted enough of a genre to, or at least the way it's executed here, for me to at least push those feelings to the side a bit and also side with her character and be like, at least we have you. Like, you are the one who's every step of the way. I don't trust this person. I don't trust this person. And Peter's like, but I don't know, Rose. Like, we might be fine. She's like, no. Why would someone in the White House stage a terror attack?

There's no excuse for it. If we find proof that Hawkins or somebody else is in on it, motive doesn't matter. I disagree. The why is everything. Yes, exactly. And I will say one other thing, which is the end of this is meant to set up more Night Agent. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I hope that...

That more Night Agent would also involve Rose and would not just involve Peter on some new spy adventure because I think I mostly like the dynamic between the two of them. And I'm not sure that I'm up for like Peter randomly goes and is a spy in more places doing more things. But I'll be interested to see how people respond to this because I think, you know, Netflix is such a weird platformer.

place right now in that they are canceling a lot of things. And I had a conversation, I did an interview with Sean Ryan years and years and years ago. And one of the things he talked about was the difficulty of the like 22, 23 episode season and how invariably it sags like around in the third quarter of like a 22 or 23 episode season, which I think is absolutely true.

And the more that drama on TV kind of got a little more serious and a little more involved, it was like, yeah, okay, but if you're making 23, 24, it's going to have that slow part. And it's interesting to me to see him kind of lean into this 10 episode, which obviously, you know, the Shield had shorter seasons also, so it's nothing new, but to see him kind of doing...

a show that feels like it could be a network show, but it has a streaming style season and presentation in that they're dropping it all at once. Yeah. Well, we want to know what you think about The Night Agent. Find us at facebook.com slash pchh. That brings us to the end of our show. Aisha Harris, thanks so much for being here. You are my night agent always. Reporting for duty. Thank you. Absolutely. We want to take a moment also to thank our Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus subscribers and

We appreciate you so much for showing your support of NPR. If you haven't signed up yet, you want to show your support and you'd like to listen to this show without any sponsor breaks, head over to plus.npr.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes.

This episode is produced by Candice Lim and Hafsa Fathima and edited by Jessica Reedy. And Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, your night agent, and we'll see you all tomorrow.

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