In the Absence of Genius, Prime Video’s Citadel Is Exactly the Spy Show We Need

It’s often said about improv comedy that while it is sublime art at its best, bad improv is pretty much the worst thing to which you could ever expose another human being. There is very little middle ground; you’re either great, or excruciating. As someone who did bad improv for many years, I can confirm this adage, and I’m starting to feel the same way about the genre of TV that I think we’re still calling “prestige.” At its best, it’s exquisite, and we live in a boom time for great shows. But with so many striving for greatness, you inevitably run into the shows that are trying to copy the steps without any sense of the larger dance, and these aspirational flops are unbearable. Arguably, they’re even worse than bad improv, because you can always go on Twitter and find someone to tell you how great they are, a false subjectivity which somehow makes the whole experience worse.

All of which leads to my point: there is serious value in a show that knows exactly what it is, and Citadel, the new spy fare from David Weil (Hunters) on Prime Video (with the Russo brothers serving as EPs), is completely bereft of pretension and bullshit. This is James Bond, but for TV and with both a male and female Bond, and they absolutely kill it. As a measure of how hard they’re killing it, take my experience: I’m a little bit of a spy snob, and every time I watch a new show with any hype I’m always holding out secret hope that I’m watching the next The Bureau, or something, and once I saw that Citadel was an action-packed, gadget-ridden, gaudy thriller-with-a-wink instead of something more meaty and realist, my heart sank and I wondered if I even wanted to keep watching. Within ten minutes, I knew that not only did I want to finish out the pilot, but that soon I’d blaze through the three episodes made available to critics.

“Citadel” is the namesake global spy agency at the heart of the drama, and in the opening scene—a train ride through the Italian Alps, of course—we meet Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) and Mason Kane (Richard Madden), Citadel’s star agents. Bad news follows quickly when it becomes clear that a rival organization, called Manticore, is out to eliminate the entire Citadel organization, and having a pretty successful time of it. A wild shootout ensues, ending in a spectacular derailment, and after a cut to credits, we race ahead eight years to see if the Citadel survivors can somehow get their act together and take a bite out of Manticore, which at this point apparently controls most of the known world.

As you can tell from words like “Manticore,” there’s a knowing garishness here, and it works marvelously. Sinh and Kane are dead serious until things get deadly serious, at which point they crack jokes at a rapid-fire pace equal to the ammunition bursts around them, and Chopra Jonas and Madden (playing something close to Robb Stark, but with rakish touches) are perfect in their tight-lipped elegance, not to mention smoldering chemistry. Stanley Tucci, who plays the head of Citadel, Bernard Orlick, is laugh-out-loud funny in his matter-of-fact, almost cheery approach to the doomed task of trying to rebuild his group in the face of incredible odds and star pupils inflicted with amnesia. (Oh yeah, if I haven’t mentioned that yet, there’s amnesia). Elsewhere, Lesley Manville plays the hilariously named Manticore operative Dahlia Archer, with the appropriate evil frigidity, while Roland Moller steals almost every scene he’s in as the Silje brothers’ henchmen nonpareil.

The secret sauce of Citadel, beyond the excellent performances, is that it manages to get you interested in the plot while still plunging into absurd realms, like the flashback where Kane has to steal a deadly virus from a stronghold in the Iranian mountains, and escapes with boots that turn into downhill skis. Within the ridiculous, Bond-level premises, it takes itself seriously enough to compel, like if Archer was live action and more geared toward plot than jokes. Or, you know, you can just settle on the could-not-be-more-apt Bond-for-TV comparison.

What we’re dealing with here is pure entertainment, dealt with smartly in a show that doesn’t strive to be especially smart on a global/political scale. What’s refreshing is how clearly it knows its limitations, never trying to put on airs as something more than top-notch spy camp. And when you know your limitations, it follows that you know your strengths, and can exploit them to the greatest degree possible. Through three episodes, that’s the headline for Citadel—it’s a show that juices up the action, hits you with all the right plot and character cliches, and thrives on the battlefield it has chosen for itself. You can do so much worse than succeeding wildly on your own terms, and for that Citadel earns its spot in our TV landscape.

Citadel premieres Friday, April 28th on Prime Video.

Shane Ryan is a writer and editor. You can find more of his writing and podcasting at Apocalypse Sports, and follow him on Twitter here.

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