I Watch TV: Citadel

 

Citadel (2023 TV Series)

What if you lost your memory and then learned you were a super-spy. No, not Jason Bourne, a gritty dark spy who has to live in the real world with complex(-ish) politics. A spy more like James Bond, though not quite the Craig years. Anyway.

Eight years ago Mason Kane and Nadia Sinh, both spies for Citadel, meet on a train in Italy. They used to be partners, and lovers, and are not entirely happy to be together again. They’re there to intercept a weapons scientist with secrets in a briefcase.

Unfortunately the show goes, sorry, off the rails before as soon as it begins. This sequence efficiently introduces Kane, Sinh, Citadel, their adversary Manticore, some cool flirtatious banter, some hardboiled professional talk, an unexpected turn about, a spectacular fight and a violent ending with a mystery hanging off it. But it’s too efficient. Sinh sits down with the scientist who asks if she’s MI6 or CIA or whatever, so she explains Citadel’s deal (dangers too great for governments). Having got her to explain this the scientist drops the act and tells her that he’s Manticore, eight families in a criminal-industrial complex who don’t want to be limited by Citadel. He opens his briefcase to show her a highlight reel of Citadel bases being attacked. They did it thirty five minutes ago!

Yet why, why is he gloating to her? Why pretend not to know? When did the video of the attacks get cut together, Sinh and Kane are in contact with Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tuchi) their sardonic control, data expert and quartermaster; why isn’t he hearing about the attacks if they've already happened? We never find out, the train is derailed and then they have their memories wiped and they vanish for the next eight years.

Eight years later a Citadel X-Case, containing secrets including nuclear weapon codes*, turns up and Bernard comes out of hiding. He kidnaps Mason Kane, now called Kyle Conroy, and his wife and child, convincing Conroy to join him to retrieve it. Inside the case are vials of backup memories to inject. Conroy has some of Kane’s instincts, enough to make the heist both possible and funny, but they’re chased, Conroy breaks his vial and Bernard is kidnapped in turn. Conroy’s only clue is to go to Valencia where he encounters Charlotte Vernon, once Nadia Sinh. Attacked by one of the Silje twins, the technological and action villain henchmen, he injects her with her backup memory and they try to work out what happened, who is hunting them, why, and what they can do about it.

Most of episodes move back and forth between past and present. The past missions are spectacular backdrops to Sinh and Kane’s relationship, starting from when they meet as he’s chased down a snowy mountain by Iranian special forces, through them disagreeing over bringing a new agent to the top level, the two of them becoming lovers, the two of them keeping secrets from each other, perhaps to protect the other, perhaps themselves. In the present Dahlia Archer, UK Ambassador to the USA and Manticore agent wants the X-Case, and then also Kane, to gain control of an automated Russian nuclear ballistic missile submarine**, and for her own reasons, while Kane and Sinh try to track down whatever’s left from Citadel, who Manticore are and what they want.

All this is generally good, especially the action sequences. The plots require everyone to not talk to each other, but they’re all spies, they keep secrets, it’s what they do. It’s what made everything go wrong and they can’t stop doing it. That’s fine. But I keep tripping over sloppy bits in the script. The worst is the first one on the train. There’s more though; at one point the chief of Citadel’s American base calls them in for a “debrief” except this is a mission briefing. When Archer explains why she is with Manticore she says she wants to hold Citadel responsible for their “crimes and misdemeanours.” Yeah, their sins and their minor peccadillos. Take revenge for the great wrongs they have done me and also the petty annoyances.

Am I holding a ridiculous action spy thriller to too high a standard? Would I be complaining about this if Citadel was a 90s basic cable show with one car chase OR one explosion per episode? Yeah maybe I would. Just one more pass at the script guys. One more and I could stop complaining about word choices and instead pay attention to the timeline of events, which I’m sure is absolutely watertight.

Watch This: Spectacular action thriller with characters wrapped up in nesting layers of conspiracy, lies and secrets
Don’t Watch This: Convoluted techno-thriller nonsense

* No new nuclear weapons in the last eight years? No change of codes? And, crucially, what do Manticore want with them, though this at least is a standard spy plot, and a criminal-industrial complex would not doubt have some use for them.

** It’s just me but an automated submarine isn’t going to keep going for eight years without maintenance, I’m just saying.