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The premise of The Night Agent series is as exciting as they come. It is about a Federal Agent who mans a phone that is never supposed to ring. Once it does, though, all hell breaks loose. Gabriel Basso plays FBI agent Peter Sutherland who is thrown into the vortex of a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top at The White House.
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Plot and Execution of The Night Agent
They've got a really good cast and great production value but the series is plagued by wooden-faced acting, This starts with the lead Basso, and goes all the way to the bottom with character artists as well. I'm not sure where the problem is, whether it's in the writing or just the direction, but the episodes are not great.
Bad Acting
There are all these body language cues that just go answered and sometimes when two actors are conversing the third actor is completely non-reactive to the scene. Luciane Buchanan plays a tech CEO Rose Larking whose aunt and uncle are killed and is terrible at emoting.
Fola Evans-Akingbola playing Chelsea alongside D.B. Woodside is terrible at acting as well, looking wooden and unemotive most of the time. Hong Chau had a small but impactful role in the mainstream movie starring Matt Damon and did a great job acting in the series.
Worse plot execution
Even the action sequences sometimes seem to miss a tight feel, with plenty of room to improve. I would have to assume the series is the way it is due to bad directing and definitely bad acting, woven together very poorly. I'm not sure if they went for the feel of a soap opera, but the plotline rules that out. Also, the plot and twists slowly lose importance as the execution is just terrible.
The background score however is mostly done well. However, with so many people acting badly, being non-reactive in scenes, or just missing cues, background scores can't make up for it. The whole thing gets massively cringe, with it feeling more and more like a high-school play with a disproportionately high production budget and big-name actors.
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Should you watch it? Maybe the first episode.
If you are used to tightly edited series, with great acting and good direction with overall execution then, this might be a sore disappointment for you. What I would honestly say is that the first episode is quite gripping, but with each passing episode, the execution gets worse. The acting gets terrible, and it seems like people just going about their lives are getting filmed. So watch The Night Agent at your own risk from the second episode onwards.
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