Mo Ryan ‏@moryan

Richard Armitage, Michelle Forbes, Richard Jenkins & esp Rhys Ifans do fabulous work in the spy drama Berlin Station

TV Review: ‘Berlin Station’
Chief TV Critic
Maureen Ryan

October 6, 2016 | 09:00AM PT

The fact that a drama about espionage is premiering on Epix is more likely to prompt the question: “What is Epix?” than it is to inspire excitement.

The little-known premium cable channel is trying to become less obscure by using an old strategy: It’s cooking up original series it hopes will create the kind of buzz that will prompt viewers to seek out the network. The good news is, even in a marketplace flooded with content, that strategy may work, given the extraordinary caliber of the cast in its first drama, “Berlin Station.”

The show doesn’t reinvent the spy drama for the modern era, nor does it rise to the level of some of the most captivating secret-agent thrillers of recent years (e.g., “London Spy,” “Deutschland 83,” and “The Americans,” the last two of which flash back to the fraught Cold War of the ’80s). But “Berlin Station,” a contemporary serial set among CIA and German operatives in that European city, is a credible option for those who enjoy “Homeland,” and appreciate its character-driven moments enough to patiently ride out the inconsistencies of the Showtime drama’s most recent seasons.

Speaking of obscurity, at times, “Berlin Station” recalls the little-known but fondly remembered AMC drama “Rubicon,” which depicted the pressure-cooker environment that spies, intelligence bureaucrats, and analysts contend with on a daily basis, and the self-destructive tendencies and elaborate coping strategies they often develop as a result. “Berlin Station” is not quite as cerebral as “The Americans” or “Rubicon,” and it occasionally cuts corners in its rush to create narrative momentum, but the Epix series has an outstanding cast that takes its reasonably solid storytelling and raises it a few notches through sheer talent and charisma.

The action kicks off when well-regarded CIA analyst Daniel Miller (Richard Armitage) decides to become a field agent and is assigned to Berlin. It’s a turbulent time for agency employees in Europe, given that an Edward Snowden-like figure has been leaking some of the CIA’s juiciest secrets to the press, and a number of those revelations have caused problems for Berlin-based spies in particular. As was the case in the fifth season of “Homeland,” “Berlin Station” gets a great deal of mileage out of shooting in the city’s ragged neighborhoods and pulsing nightclubs, and the versatile Armitage, who supplies some of the coiled intensity he brought to “Hannibal,” looks at home in both.

The pilot for “Berlin Station” has a careening energy and is overly packed with convoluted set-up (at one point, several characters become agitated over the fate of a man named Gerald, and it’s not ideal that, among the thicket of rapidly introduced characters, Gerald hadn’t made much of an impression). But once the show gets beyond that bumpy first installment, it generally settles into a pleasing groove, one that often allows the stellar cast to do its captivating work.

Richard Jenkins plays Steven Frost, the head of the CIA station, and it’s fascinating to watch Frost work through several tricky situations, and along the way, ponder just how cutthroat he’s willing to be in pursuit of a promotion. The series skillfully depicts the ways in which friendships, affairs, and spycraft are impossible to untangle inside any intelligence service, and a scene from Frost’s personal life allows Jenkins to deliver one of the best monologues you’ll see this year. His performance is all the more impressive given that he’s playing a character who is often reactive and watchful, qualities that can be difficult to illuminate and sustain. But making Frost magnetic is easy for the intensely gifted Jenkins.

As Valerie Edwards, a steely subordinate of Frost’s, Michelle Forbes’ almost unparalleled ability to play characters who are intelligent, driven and quietly compassionate is used to good effect. Edwards is often at odds with another ambitious CIA employee, the brusque Robert Kirsch (Leland Orser), who often seems more worried about his career goals than America’s intelligence agenda. Then again, that doesn’t make Kirsch an exception among the CIA employees depicted in this drama, in which spies and spy agencies are shown as viciously competitive, and generally dismissive of the journalists and civilians who are distrustful of them.

But social and political commentary take a back seat in “Berlin Station,” which is much more concerned with the meat-and-potatoes of TV espionage: The 10-part drama is full of dead drops, grainy surveillance footage, illicit affairs, ratty apartments, and faltering relationships poisoned by secrets. Not being able to tell people what they do all day and what keeps them up at night are reasons these spies drink on the job — and off it.

The most reliable staple of spy fiction, of course, is the burnt-out, cynical operative who has seen far too much. Here, that type is personified by longtime CIA field agent Hector DeJean (Rhys Ifans). Hector is a dissolute rogue who feels as though he could have been plucked from one of Graham Greene’s best novels. It doesn’t diminish the strong work of the other actors to state that the real reason to seek out “Berlin Station” is to witness Ifans’ a spectacular performance.

Daniel and Hector are old friends, but it emerges that each man has good reason to be at least a little suspicious of the other. The strange pas de deux between them grows in importance over the course of the first four episodes, and as complications arise, the acerbic and charming Hector provides the program with an irresistible gravitational force.

The secret at the heart of the series is that Hector, a man who’s done many questionable and indefensible things, provides this murky world with the remnants of a moral compass. As much as he would rather let his conscience die, underneath his hard-partying exterior, he still cares about doing the right thing. Ifans brings such depth, barely contained anger and wounded yearning to the role that Hector quickly emerges one of the most memorable new characters of the year. Even if he’s utterly untrustworthy, he’s reliably captivating.

Fall TV Review Guide 2016 Round 7: ‘Falling Water,’ ‘Channel Zero,’ ‘Goliath’ & More

by Allison Keene 18 hours ago


[...]

Berlin Station

Premiere: Sunday, October 16th on Epix

Cast: Richard Armitage, Richard Jenkins, Rhys Ifans, Michelle Forbes, Tamlyn Tomita, Leland Orser

Feeling rather reminiscent to Homeland Season 5, Epix’s first drama series (set to run for 10 episodes) follows a CIA agent (Armitage) who is tasked with an undercover operation in Berlin to find out who is leaking intel to the press, Assange (or Snowden) style. Armitage leads a truly great cast, all of whom are nuanced in their approach to characters with both known and unknown agendas, each one layered in their personal and professional lives which often intertwine.

Filmed in Berlin and Spain’s Canary Islands, Berlin Station has the right look and feel of a great spycraft series, but it lacks the drive or urgency of a show like Homeland, or even The Night Manager. It’s very slow, dense, gray, and measured as it unfolds its tale of state secrets and treachery (much of which is too easily telegraphed). But for fans of spy series in general it may serve as a particular kind of catnip. However, for casual viewers, it has trouble catching fire — even though it’s worth tuning in initially for Armitage’s performance alone. — Allison Keene

Rating: ★★

[...]

‘Berlin Station’ Review: Spy Drama Needs Less Talk, More Richard Jenkins Gettin’ Busy
With so many great spy thrillers on TV — "The Americans," "Homeland," "The Night Manager," to name a few — EPIX's first original series plays it way too safe.
TV Critic

Ben Travers

Oct 12, 2016 10:58 am

Spy dramas are a delicate balance of tactical thinking and explosive action, with the latter typically going down far less often than the former. Even more action-heavy espionage tales — your “Homelands,” your James Bonds — light a fuse with their lengthy scenes of stalking, talking and traditional spy-craft. Many also incorporate varying degrees of sensuality — your “Americans,” your “Night Managers” — as the mentally strenuous life of a spy can lead to physically exhausting nighttime excursions. The best of the genre usually links the two together: The thrill of the chase and satisfaction of success can be found on the streets and in the sheets.

“Berlin Station,” the first original drama series from EPIX, has too little thrills of any kind. There’s a lot of exposition very clearly pointed toward real-world politics in the opening hour, but the show’s commentary is largely muted by contradictory choices in later episodes. Through four hours of the 10-episode first season, only one need is truly clear: Richard Jenkins needs to have more sex.

Now, we know that sounds a little crazy. The actor whom many came to know first as the dead father on “Six Feet Under” hasn’t exactly become a sex symbol in between the HBO drama’s release and EPIX’s first original offering. But the stylish Emmy winner is not only the most charismatic actor on a series packed with bland performances — most fatally Richard Armitage, in the lead role — but he’s also playing the only character leading the fittingly complex, dangerous, living-on-the-edge life of a bonafide freakin’ spy!

Park of the problem is that Jenkins’ character — Steven Frost, the CIA’s station chief in Berlin — isn’t our main protagonist. It’s not even clear he’s a protagonist. The only clear “good guy” is Armitage’s Daniel Miller, a CIA officer who ends up in Berlin after discovering exclusive information on the agency’s top target: whistleblower Thomas Shaw. Bluntly compared to Edward Snowden (in case the parallel wasn’t obvious already), Shaw has been exposing secrets at a rapid pace and has his eye fixed on agents in the Berlin station. How is he getting his information? Who’s feeding it to him? What damaging personal and professional secrets could come out while the spies continue their manhunt?

All of this sounds like it would make for tense tales of spies hunting spies packed with juicy twists revealed at inopportune hours. Alas, the ineffective introduction of characters combined with a general lack of visceral energy drag down the show long enough for viewers to lose interest. Things pick up a bit later on, but it’s not enough to redeem the series.

… Even if Episode 3 does make a strong case for more Richard Jenkins. Shifting perspective to the station chief rather than his lackluster agents, we get an inside look at the inner turmoil wreaking havoc within Frost. Sure, there’s a blunt visual metaphor repeated throughout the episode to varying effect, but it’s just nice to see a little effort from a production team otherwise content to showcase its admittedly appealing Berlin-based locations. (Really, “Berlin Station” earns its name here.) More importantly, Frost gets “the third heat” blatantly absent in other characters. He’s on the outs at work, thanks to all these Thomas Shaw leaks. He’s got a problem at home that hasn’t yet surfaced. And he’s got a secret — a big one — that could change everything.

Did we mention Jenkins gets a nude scene? Well, you see him laying on his side with an (age appropriate) lady friend in what’s set up as a sensual post-coital cuddle. In just about any other show, that scene would’ve gone to the hot young couple, so “Berlin Station” deserves kudos for bucking this one expectation. It’s just a shame the series isn’t brave enough to do it more often — with anyone, but come on. It’s Richard Freakin’ Jenkins!

Grade: C+

Falling Water’ & ‘Berlin Station’ Review: Ambitious Dramas Succeed With Smarts

by Dominic Patten
October 12, 2016 5:33pm

USA Network/Epix
With the debuts of USA Network’s Falling Water on October 13 and Epix’s Berlin Station on October 16, the battle to be a cable contender just became more interesting. As I say in my video review above, both series — Gale Anne Hurd and Blake Masters’ on the home of Mr. Robot, and the Olen Steinhauer-created and Bradford Winters-showrun spy thriller, respectively — succeed admirably in planting flags for their channels, though with very different approaches.

Related'The Walking Dead' Marathon To Highlight AMC's FearFest
If you are looking for the conventional, the dreamscape of Falling Water will spin your head round and round. The 10-episode first season of the Universal Cable Productions series created by Masters and former Homeland EP Henry Bromell (who passed away in 2013) dives deep into notions of the unconscious, the powers that be and the experience of “even when you are here, you are not here,” to quote the show.



At its shimmering and sometimes intangible core, the stylized Falling Waters tracks a trio of seemingly disconnected characters who are dreaming parts of the the same dream with a bigger picture looming. American Horror Story: Asylum alum Lizzie Brocheré plays Tess, a designer and trend predictor; Will Yun Lee is Taka, a NYPD detective with lingering family responsibilities who is pursuing a cult of dream seekers; and a very strong David Ajala portrays Burton, the security chief for a global investment bank teetering on the edge of some very big deals. Casual‘s Zak Orth pieces together the puzzle a bit as a CEO obsessed with the untapped power of dreams and a collective unconscious.

Although the pilot moves along at a good pace, Falling Water has a bit of a slow lift-off that ends up, from what I’ve seen, pushing the boundaries and the science and weaves its way into occupying a lot more than the present moment.

On another side of the narrative spectrum, Paramount TV and Anonymous Content’s Berlin Station with a cast featuring Richard Armitage, Michelle Forbes, Richard Jenkins and Rhys Ifans is a pretty standard spy thriller that tackles some surprising new angles of modern espionage. With an Edward Snowden-Julian Assange mix in the form of infamous leaker Thomas Shaw revealing the CIA’s secrets to the world, Hannibal alum Armitage’s Daniel Miller is put in the agency’s German office to catch the whistleblower. However, it is the top-notch performances by Jenkins as the insecure and scheming CIA station chief, Forbes as an ambitious administrator who disregards The Company’s hierarchy, and Ifans as a veteran agent who is equal parts hard-living, hard-edged and frustrated that really makes the drama in Epix’s first original scripted series so compelling.

Take a look at more of what I think of Falling Water and Berlin Station by clicking on my video review above. You can also take a look at the shows themselves as both cablers have put early episodes online. Tell us what you think.

Und immerhin ist es im ganzen eine positive Review.

Another premium channel piles on to Peak TV with Graves and Berlin Station
By Danette Chavez@bonmotvivant
Oct 14, 2016 12:00 AM

.....Berlin Station fares better in mining hot-button issues for drama, but it’s still a slow burn. Olen Steinhauer’s put together another spy thriller with a faded template (does the sun ever shine in Germany?) that still has plenty of bright spots in the cast and story. The first two episodes are a bit scattered, though, and you’ll find yourself doing some Carrie Mathison-level parsing of clues early on to figure out who has the potential to determine just what and who is at stake. And that’s before all the truly clandestine shit goes down.

That Homeland reference ends up being right at home in Berlin Station, which also centers on German journalists and surveillance. Of course, that older storyline could have just as easily borrowed from the European nation’s own tradition of listening in on others. But the Berlin setting doesn’t just inform the series’ treatment of international quagmires and sensitivity to scandals. The long history and high visibility of Berlin’s LGBT community also provides a metaphor for all the secrecy of espionage. It’s kind of an obvious choice, but that concept of double lives does indeed apply across the board, and it also reflects a deeper understanding of the area. Richard Armitage leads the series as Daniel Miller, a CIA analyst turned operative who’s tasked with tracking down one Thomas Shaw, who’s kind of the Julian Assange of Germany. Shaw has been leaking highly sensitive CIA data via a Berlin journalist, revealing just how inextricably linked the German and American intelligence communities are. It’s embarrassing and dangerous for both governments, and the rash of incidents leaves the Berlin Station of the CIA scrambling. Berlin chief Steve Frost (Richard Jenkins) is dealing with more than the leaks; he’s struggling to retain control of staff, which appears to have a mole and a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Jenkins is commanding in this new role: Even as the head of a besieged CIA outpost, he still sounds like he knows more than everyone else.

Much like his biblical namesake, Daniel’s been thrown into the lion’s den. He’s not quite outmatched, but he is outnumbered: When everyone around you dissembles as well as you do, it becomes almost impossible to keep your enemies straight. Daniel avoids the perilous intraoffice politics, though he too has ulterior motives. Armitage, who’s best known for playing a dragon and fighting one, slips easily into this extraordinary everyman role, making Daniel a convincing desk jockey and seductive field agent. The German-bred analyst has a tragic backstory he’s not so great at hiding, though. It’s supposed to inspire Daniel’s conflicted feelings about “going home” again, but his inability to conceal his past ends up undermining his competence a bit.


Richard Jenkins (Photo: Epix/Paramount)
These reveals continue throughout the first part of the series: Steinhauer doesn’t draw out the mystery of the whistle-blower’s identity, nor their motivations. We discover early on who’s behind the leaks, but we can’t yet fathom the lengths they’ll go to maintain the conspiracy. Suspense and suspicions still run high, though—Daniel might be in his old haunts, and around his old partner Hector (Rhys Ifans), but he’s still an outsider. He’s also trying to keep up appearances in three different versions of his own life. But, as we soon learn, he’s not the only one.

It remains to be seen how well this cards-on-the-table approach serves the story in the long run, but the tension of a mystery and its satisfying resolution isn’t always the order of the day. Berlin Station also draws parallels between the hiding in plain sight that spies do with the discretion that LGBT folks have to demonstrate even in a city like Berlin, which established the world’s first gay district (or village). While some characters are openly gay, others remain closeted, but they’re not the only ones leading double lives. They also share a desire with their hetero-counterparts to let their guard down, a vulnerability that can come at a high cost. Figuring out how to obtain that level of authenticity seems just as important to Berlin Station as stopping Thomas Shaw.

Epix weighs in twice with its first scripted series of note -- Graves and Berlin Station
10/13/16 11:26 AM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter

Epix very much wants to be a player in a standing room only league of rival networks and streamers that already have made their marks with standout scripted programming.

It’s taken quite a while. But now come Epix’s first two original series of note -- Graves and Berlin Station. Preceded by a concerted promotional campaign, they arrive Sunday night at the close of a free preview weekend. Graves is the showier of the two, with Nick Nolte front and center as a former president seeking to atone for being the “worst ever.” Berlin Station has a better grip on itself, though, as a skulk-around spy drama set in contemporary times. Both have 10-episode first seasons. Let’s take a closer look.

Graves

Premiering: Sunday, Oct. 16th at 9 p.m. (central) on Epix
Starring: Nick Nolte, Sela Ward, Skylar Astin, Helene Yorke, Chris Lowe, Callie Hernandez, Nia Vadalos, Ernie Hudson, Roger Bart, Angelica Maria
Produced by: Joshua Michael Stern, Greg Shapiro, Keith Eisner, Eric Weinberg

Nick Nolte is tattered, battered but still standing -- both as an actor and as former Republican President Richard Graves. His character left the Oval Office 25 years ago, and Google hasn’t been kind to him. “Who was the worst President in history?” he types. The consensus answer is him.

Throughout the three episodes made available for review, Nolte’s voice sounds as though he’s just gargled with glass shards. Moreover, his overall physical appearance resembles a totaled car. But at age 75, Nolte’s still a vigorous on-screen presence, cursing his way toward redemption by publicly admitting that the Graves administration did a lot more harm than good.

This fully dawns on him after a night’s worth of pot-smoking with comely Samantha (Callie Hernandez), a heavily tattooed young waitress turned muse. He preps for this epiphany by disgustedly trashing his own presidential museum on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. It’s prelude to Graves awakening in a golf course sand trap. “I just crash-landed in the middle of my life. I’m born again, sweetheart!” he announces to his wife, Margaret (Sela Ward). “And it’s total peace!”

Graves is billed as a “dramedy,” but its comedic beats to often are out of rhythm. This is particularly the case with Grave’s awkward new assistant, a kid named Isaiah Miller (Skylar Austin). HBO’s Veep knows how to play its underlings to the hilt. Graves can be painful in comparison.

The ex-president’s “compound” is in Santa Fe, where the former First Lady gamely puts up with him. (Susan Sarandon originally was cast in the role, but withdrew.)

The Graves also have two children, neither terribly happy with their lives. Daughter Olivia (Helene Yorke) was married to a Rockefeller until he jilted her. She’s retaliated by blow-torching profanities onto some of their high-priced living room fixtures. Son Jeremy (Chris Lowell) is returning from Afghanistan to reluctantly live with his parents. He and his father haven’t gotten along in years.

Cameos abound, with Rudy Giuliani and Bill Richardson first seen playing themselves none too convincingly during Graves’ dedication of a veterans facility before a notably small crowd. Jillian Michaels, Joan Lunden, Jake Tapper, Michael Steele and the inevitable Wolf Blitzer also can be glimpsed during the course of the first three episodes.

Graves is hardly revered as Ronald Reagan-esque, but was seriously wounded after a would-be assassin pumped three bullets into him. The resemblances to Donald Trump are a bit more pronounced. Graves’ hair is orange-ish and a current strict deportation policy -- for which he’s newly remorseful -- had its origins during his conservative presidency. In Episode 3, Graves revels in being “unshackled.” It was filmed well before Trump recently proclaimed the same, but now can be seen as somehow prescient. Graves also thunders near the close of Sunday’s premiere, “I will be your biggest advocate, your beacon of hope, your goddamn President.” Where have we heard that kind of self-aggrandizement before?

Graves assuredly will turn off some viewers with its title character’s U-turns from previous conservative positions on military spending and illegal immigration. The series clearly has an “agenda,” but isn’t all that artful in putting it forth. Nolte’s performance is energetic without being particularly memorable. It’s mostly nice to see he’s still vertical and with a little something left in the tank after many years of rough living. Occasionally, Graves also is fairly steady on its feet. But only occasionally.

GRADE: C

There are no free agents in CIA drama Berlin Station.

Premiering: Sunday, Oct. 16th at 8 p.m. (central)on Epix
Starring: Richard Armitage, Rhys Ifans, Richard Jenkins, Michelle Forbes, Leland Orser, Tamyln Tomita, Caroline Goodall, Bernhard Schultz, Mina Tander, Sabin Tambrea
Produced by: Olen Steinhauer, Bradford Winters, Eric Roth, Steve Golin, Kerry Kohansky-Roberts, Keith Redmon, Luke Rivett, Michael Roskam

There’s lately too much of this going around -- not spy dramas per se, but the apparent killing of a principal character in the opening segment before a rewind to earlier events.

This time it’s “Two Months Earlier” in Panama, where CIA officer Daniel Miller (Richard Armitage) is traipsing through the jungle before finding something valuable. He’s soon reassigned to Berlin with a mission to track down a dangerous leaker of CIA secrets known as “Thomas Shaw.”

Everything that ensues in the two Berlin Station episodes sent for review isn’t always completely understandable in terms of following the bouncing storyline. But the basic task is clear enough. Shaw must be identified and then stopped by any means necessary.

The cast is first-rate, with Oscar nominee and Emmy Winner Richard Jenkins (The Visitor, Olive Kitteridge) in his usual fine form as station chief Steven Frost. Increasingly feeling undermined, he’s encouraged to retire by his wife, Kelly (Caroline Goodall) and encouraged in other ways during liaisons with his secretary, Sandra Abe (Tamlyn Tomita).

Also more or less working for Frost are ambitious internal branch chief Valerie Edwards (Michelle Forbes), officious deputy chief Robert Kirsch (Leland Orser) and veteran case officer Hector DeJean (Rhys Ifans), who turns out to be -- well, never mind.

ISIS (or ISIL as used in Berlin Station) also factors into these webs of intrigue. So there’s a lot at stake, and not a lot of laughs.

Filmed in Berlin and the Canary Islands, Berlin Station has both an authentic look and feel. As with most cloak-and-dagger dramas, there’s a lot of following around while the mind games escalate and the sound track remains stuck in the key of ominous. Berlin Station so far looks like a series worth riding out, with Jenkins, Armitage, Ifans and Forbes all making strong contributions to the cause.

GRADE: B

New Cable Thrillers Pick Up Where Broadcast Premieres End
Check out Berlin Station and Eyewitness

Glenn Garvin | October 14, 2016


TV Reviews

Eyewitness. USA. Sunday, October 16, 10 p.m.

Looking at the schedule this week, it's hard not to see a metaphor for the roiling changes in television. The broadcast networks take a break in their anachronistic fall rollout, on which they spent hundreds of millions of dollars and drove dozens of marketing focus groups insane—and cable quickly steps in with a pair of high-impact dramas which, though cheaper and lacking any big name stars, are at least as good as anything the broadcasters have offered up this fall. And one of them you can watch for free on-line! (For a couple of episodes, anyway.)

USA's Eyewitness and Epix's Berlin Station share little but their high quality. Eyewitness is a conventional if extraordinarily well-executed crime thriller that grabs you almost from the first frame. Berlin Station is more of a slow burn, a grim, complex tale of spies on an existential treadmill who no longer remember why they got on but lack any idea of how to get off.

Eyewitness is adapted from the Norwegian series Øyevitne, but its premise—teenagers on an illicit rendezvous witness a crime, but can't report it without giving themselves away—is as old as, well, teenagers. (My favorite example is Pat Frank's exquisitely paranoid Cold War novel, Forbidden Area, subsequently adapted for TV, in which a couple making out on the beach spot the arrival of a Soviet saboteur but don't tell anybody, which nearly leads to nuclear holocaust. Talk about the wages of sin!)

Eyewitness gives the premise a very modern twist: The teenagers are gay. Lukas (James Paxton, Term Life) is a high school in-crowder who doesn't think his popularity would survive coming out of the closet. ("I don't wanna be that guy...nobody wants me to be that guy.") Philip (Tyler Young, When We Rise) is less uncomfortable on that score, but as a socially marginal foster kid, newly arrived at the small-town school from a drug-addled household in the city, feels he's in no position to argue. So when they witness a drug shootout in the woods that ends with four bodies on the ground, their lips stay sealed.

Yet the complications are many. One of the supposed drug dealers was an undercover FBI agent, which brings federal interest. The local police chief (Julianne Nicholson) is not only Philip's foster mother (which allows him to surreptitiously monitor her investigation, but also stokes his paranoia) but also a former big-city homicide detective with a harrowing secret in her past. Worst of all, one of those drug dealers wasn't really dead—and now he's searching for the boys.

Eyewitness is written and produced by Dutch-born Adi Hasak, who also created Øyevitne. His Hollywood resume is thin but nonetheless impressive; he's collaborated with Luc Bresson on a couple of thrillers (Three Days To Kill and Shadow Conspiracy) and created Shades of Blue, the startlingly good corrupt-cop crime drama that NBC used as late-in-the-year filler last season. Eyewitness gives every reason to think Hasak's got a promising career ahead of him.

His script for the pilot episode is a model of expositional economy that lays down a complicated premise in just a few minutes, then adds complicating elements one by one. He has also somehow managed to capture the Nordic-noir feel of Øyevitne without the by-now cliched use of bleak weather. The intrusion of urban mayhem into the pastoral small-town setting gives Eyewitness an unsettlingly claustrophobic sense of a village under siege. You may not want to live there, but I bet you'll want to visit once a week.

[b]Berlin Station is anything but bucolic. Its astringent Berlin venues—soulless skyscrapers, neo-Isherwoodian techno clubs and harshly lit spy cubbyholes—are the sere landscape for this somber tale of spies who can't come in from the cold.

Produced by, among others, spy novelist Olen Steinhauer and veteran TV writer-producer Bradford Winters (whose screenplays cover an impressive chronology from The Borgias to The Americans), Berlin Station follows the hunt for a Snowdenesque mole who is leaking unflattering CIA secrets to the world.

But the molehunters are an anything-but-heroic lot. They're at least as motivated by prosaic personal concerns—fear of exposure of furtive lunchtime dalliances, career setbacks, aborted office transfers—as they are about national security.

They also vary considerably in their dedication to shutting down the leak. Danny Miller (Richard Armitage, Hannibal), the newest arrival at Berlin Station, still smoldering over his mother's death in a terrorist bombing when he was a child, is single-minded in pursuit of a mole whose disruptions of CIA operations, wittingly or not, aid jihadist campaigns against the west.

His old friend Hector DeJean (Rhys Ifans, Snowden), weary after a lifetime as both perpetrator and victim of intelligence betrayals, is more cynical. "The truth won't set you free," he warns Danny, referring to the CIA's motto. "Beneath one secret there's another and another and another, one big fucking mess of our own creation."

Berlin Station has its share of bang-bang, but more often it's a chronicle of the daily drudgery of intelligence work: loading and clearing dead-drops of messages from spies, flashing signs and countersigns, keeping the peace with the host country's intelligence service.

This last, in fact, powers one of Berlin Station's most important subplots. The CIA's relationship with Germany's spy agency has been strained to the breaking point by the leaker's disclosure that the Americans had a mole inside German intelligence.

That has complicated CIA efforts to persuade German security forces to arrest a supposedly retired ISIS bomber. The alternative: a politically explosive CIA kidnapping of the ISIS man. The dilemma has already sent damaging ripples throughout the Berlin station, including the abandonment of a blown source, for fear his rescue would tip other intelligence agencies to CIA plans. "Can't we, just for once, just for fucking once, do the right thing?" demands one of the CIA officers, to which his boss snaps: "You want to do the right thing? Join the fuckin' Peace Corps."

Fans of James Bond or Jason Bourne are not likely to enjoy the slow seduction of Berlin Station. Like the work of John LeCarre, it starts at a leisurely and sometimes bemusing pace. (In some of the earliest moments, needlessly so; television's affectational fascination with flashbacks contributes nothing to Berlin Station but confusion, though happily, they soon cease.) But sometime toward the end of the first episode, the show hits critical mass and turns mesmerizing and addictive. With Showtime's Homeland and its bipolar spook Carrie Mathison AWOL until next year, Berlin Station has a temporary corner on the dysfunctional-spy market. Buy in.[/url]

Review: ‘Berlin Station,’ the Hunt for a C.I.A. Whistle-Blower

By MIKE HALEOCT. 14, 2016


Olen Steinhauer is a successful espionage novelist (his latest is “All the Old Knives”) who’s now created a television series, “Berlin Station,” for the premium-cable channel Epix. It appears to be his first dramatic work, and as rookie efforts go, it’s more than solid.

“Berlin Station,” which is part of Epix’s first foray into scripted programming (along with the political comedy “Graves”), is a little talky, maybe a little over-plotted and populated — though a lot of 10-episode serials feel that way in the early going. But, on the evidence of its first four episodes, it keeps you interested in the central question of who’s leaking information about the inner workings of the C.I.A.’s Berlin office. (The agency is battling its own Edward Snowden, here called Thomas Shaw.)

For that, Epix can primarily thank an excellent cast that includes Richard Armitage (Thorin in the “Hobbit” films) as an agent sent to Berlin to find Shaw; Michelle Forbes, Leland Orser, Tamlyn Tomita and a more restrained than usual Rhys Ifans as fellow spies; and the redoubtable Richard Jenkins as the embattled station chief.

Mr. Steinhauer, in an interview with The New York Times Book Review, cited “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” as his favorite spy novel, and the influence of its author, John le Carré, is evident in the show’s emphasis on the politics and personalities of the station, which looks and feels like a midsize corporate office warren. It’s pop le Carré, more lightweight (you could say shallower) and verging on soap opera in its romantic and familial entanglements. Over all, on the spy-show spectrum, “Berlin Station” sits somewhere between the angst and high polish of “Homeland” and the cotton-candy escapism of “Covert Affairs.”

It helps, when the spy-story mechanics become a little too obvious, that the show is shot on location in Berlin, which provides an endless variety of intriguing backdrops. “Berlin Station” also dips into the city’s all-night pansexual bacchanalia, using as its ticket Mr. Ifans’s character, a lounge-lizard type with questionable motives. And the German characters, both the espionage-agency counterparts and the suspected terrorists, add exotic Euro-flavor — one shaggy-maned bad guy looks as if he’s constantly suffering the sorrows of young Werther.

“Berlin Station,” based on the early episodes, isn’t going to say anything very profound about the real consequences of the war on terrorism — it doesn’t get any deeper than a disillusioned spook’s complaint that “beneath one secret there’s another and another and another, one big mess of our own creation.” It’s the TV show as page-turner, if you have room on your night stand.