It's no secret that Netflix likes to generate content, for better or worse. Critical and commercial success stories like Stranger Things, The Sandman, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and now the explosive Wednesday series have dominated the original content charts for the streamer and helped it maintain its status while competing with a lineup in constant expansion. transmission services. These TV shows stand out in a sea of constant new releases for Netflix that tend to be based on more generic plots and casts, most of which you haven't even heard of or stumbled across until long after they've naturally ended. or by force. While Betrayal might not set Netflix on fire in the same way that the Addams Family or the residents of Hawkins, Indiana have, this short spy thriller is certainly a worthy addition to your watch list.
Written by Matt Charman, the Oscar-nominated writer behind the historical thriller Bridge of Spies, directed by Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance, Treason is another project that places its characters in an intricate and carefully crafted web of lies. Leading this tense five-episode drama is Charlie Cox, best known for his work as the title character in Daredevil. His captivating portrayal of the iconic Marvel hero kept audiences' attention and earned the public's trust, though surprisingly there haven't been many other substantial, meaty roles for Cox to sink his teeth into thus far. Treason puts the English actor front and center as Adam Lawrence, a trusted MI6 agent who has been steadily rising through the ranks for 15 years. When Sir Martin Angelis, the head of MI6, is poisoned in a restaurant and rendered unable to carry out his governmental duties, everyone puts the backup plan in motion and assumes new roles and responsibilities from him.
Creator: Matt Charman
Stars: Olga Kurylenko, Oona Chaplin, Ciarán Hinds
This is a situation that absolutely demands an explanation, and if you promise me a satisfactory solution, I'll watch the 15-season lead-up to getting to that destination.
I use two: the event in medias res and the situation to which we return are so diametrically in contrast that curiosity is inevitable. A woman with bright fuchsia hair is being tortured by men who yell at her in Mandarin. She seems helpless and terrified under the pressure. She cut to the same woman, now a brunette, in an ornate but comforting university exam room, facing the pressure of... finishing an exam. Yes, that's the first two minutes of Alias and it's one of the best two-minute pilot openings in television history.
No one did in medias res releases as well as J.J. Abrams and company on Alias (at least for a while), which is part of why the headlines for a couple of new Netflix spy shows are so terribly disappointing and unnecessary. If Abrams made A-lias, Netflix's The Recruit and Treason is basically C+-lias, not exactly bad, but inevitably in the shadow of a superior original that's available to stream if you just head over to Hulu.
Both shows also make the same mistake in their respective openings in medias res, a mistake that points to central flaws in both shows. They launch their pilots with utterly genre-standard, utterly nondescript spy starts: a guy running in the snow with a gun, two people ominously watched by a sniper, so utterly forgettable that by the time the main story reaches the opening, I had forgotten. that the opening in medias res existed at all.
A good opening in medias res has to be unforgettable. It has to be something that 20 percent of your brain is always thinking about: "Is this the part where the show will explain the 50 adorably dead white rabbits?" Otherwise, you're just using the structuring device as a superficial excuse to start some action to buy yourself 40 minutes of post exposure, which is absolutely what The Recruit and Treason are doing.
There ends my lecture on openings in medias res. As for Betrayal, which, if I'm being honest, is probably more of a C+ version of 24 than a C+ version of Alias. Previous shenanigans.
Charlie Cox stars as Adam Lawrence, MI6 Deputy Director or possibly MI6 Deputy Director. It's unclear if this would be an actual distinction or if the show cares if it would be a distinction. Adam's boss is Sir Martin Angelis, an intelligence legend played by Ciaran Hinds, who gets "Con" credit here, two facts that should be minor spoilers right away.
Martin is promptly poisoned by a mysterious Russian woman (Olga Kurylenko). This is Kara, she has both a professional and a personal past.
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