‘The Night Agent’ Forgets That Political Thrillers Should Be…Thrilling
In case you might have been unable to ascertain from its title, The Night Agent is about an agent. The twist? He works at night. Now, that is not inherently special. McDonald’s employees work at night too, and they have to battle drunk college students stumbling in five minutes before closing, demanding McFlurrys through a cloud of Jaegerbomb haze. But the titular night agent in Netflix’s The Night Agent is an agent, who works at night, and—get this—is waiting for a phone call!
For all of the ridiculously named shows and movies out there right now, The Night Agent might just be a pretty solid entry into the canon, despite its silly title. And to be fair, it is named after Matthew Quirk’s 2019 novel of the same name; one of those giant-cover-font, John Grisham-esque novels that jump out at you from the Barnes & Noble sale rack. Your dad has probably read it, and he’ll probably be thrilled when you tell him that there’s a new Netflix series adapted from it, streaming today on the platform.
The Night Agent follows the titular night agent, Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso), a low-level FBI employee whose security clearance is so bottom-rung that he can’t even be trusted to work during the day. Peter toils away for an equally amusingly titled government program called “Night Action,” which serves as a liaison for undercover agents to call a phone in the White House basement. From there, Peter patches their distress calls through to the appropriate channels.