CBS’ newest thriller “CIA” is conservative entertainment both in the sense that it trades on old successes, and that it pictures an America more threatened than threatening.
The spinoff of Dick Wolf’s long-running series stakes its ground in the time-honored, time-worn conceit of clashing personalities forced to work side by side. The Oscar and Felix in this concoction are, respectively, CIA agent Colin Glass (Tom Ellis), loose, and FBI guy Bill Goodman (Nick Gehlfuss), tight, bunged together in a special secret CIA-FBI hybrid.
It’s so special that they are the only two people in it, and so secret that the writers can do anything they want with it. It takes no trained profiler to glean everything you need to know about these two from Colin’s leather jacket, Bill’s salaryman suit, their differing hairstyles and facial hair (some versus none), all expressed in their distinct approaches to crime fighting.
Still, in the annals of crime fiction, there is no couple so odd that they won’t eventually become one — much in the way that cats will create a shared social space by rubbing their scent against one another. So as not to keep you on tenterhooks, “CIA” gets you most of the way there by the end of the first hour.
With his James Bond 1990 vibe, Colin is the partner one instinctively prefers, unless one has a natural liking for Eagle Scout types. There are no vodka martinis to shake, not stir, but in one scene Colin (born in America but raised in England, ergo the accent) goes into a steam room to trade information with a beautiful Russian agent. (She: “How did you know I was looking for this?” He: “How did you know I was in Kiev in 2019?”) Bill, who thinks like a cop, doesn’t quite trust Colin, who doesn’t think like one.
Providing guidance and backup are Necar Zadegan, who was in “NCIS: New Orleans,” as New York station deputy chief Nikki Reynard, and Natalee Linez as computer-wrangling analyst Gina Gosian.
Jeremy Sisto crosses over from “FBI” as Bill’s “real” boss, who has his own special assignment for him that will surely drive episodes going forward. I would bet matchsticks that they will be joined by at least one additional regular — probably a funny one.
I don’t want to go too deep into the plot, which involves a supersonic weapon, stolen software, assassins on motorcycles and a common ticking-clock device, but it’s closer to “Moonraker,” say, than “Slow Horses.” The trick the good guys play to bring the bad to heel makes no real sense, only TV spy sense. But this is, after all, television, and “CIA” knows what some of us want, or will settle for, from our spies.
