The Modern Cad Guide to TV - The Agency Season 1

Fassbender stars as Martian, a CIA agent recalled to London leaving a cover life that has bled into his real one. Tasked with leading a team to find and protect a vital asset, Coyote, his past and present collide as he juggles his professional duties with his personal needs, romantic and familial.

Wider members of his team and his family fight and learn to survive in a modern shadow land where intelligence-gathering, geo-politics and naked ambition combine to create a world of shifting alliances and desperate ploys.

The cast around Fassbender play the roles of loved family members, professional colleagues, venal assets, ruthless soldiers and cynical bureaucrats with a deft touch and often flashes of brilliant understatement. Wry humour, lingering pauses and well choreographed action compliment the complex plotting which rewards patience.

Fassbender himself leaves us guessing as to his true motives while presenting himself as a consummate intelligence professional - he is an old hand at delivering intensity and does not disappoint. On the contrary his silence conveys drama as effectively as his speech.

Season 2 cannot come soon enough….