Are We in a Golden Age for Spy Television?

Chris and Andy talk about the bounty of spy TV shows that are airing right now. They cover the new Showtime thriller series ‘The Agency,’ which is based on the French series ‘Le Bureau des Légendes’ (1:00), and how they hope the show is able to go on for multiple seasons and develop like the original did (26:03). They also talk about the first episode of ‘Get Millie Black,’ a Netflix cop drama set in Jamaica (45:21). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Ryan?

  What's up everybody, Chris Vernon here and welcome to a new season of the NBA and The Mismatch. And huge welcome as well to my new co-host, Dave Jacoby.

• 0:10Speaker 01

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• 0:18Chris Ryan?

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:47Speaker 04

  I need support staff to clear the room. Stand up and walk now.

• 1:52Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me on the other line, pardoning all his sons, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 2:08Andy Greenwald?

  Buddy, are you making a reference to the American news? Because I am very ignorant.

• 2:13Chris Ryan?

  Would you like me to just kind of break out A1 and read some stories to you? Just kind of like Marc Maron, Air America style?

• 2:20Andy Greenwald?

  Are you across this? Are you across everything right now?

• 2:23Chris Ryan?

  Dude, I'm obviously referencing our current president, Joseph Biden, pardoning his son Hunter Biden. And the reason why I do it, and it's great to see your smile and face. You're back in England for a week, but we're recording across time and space to bring people content today. And, you know, I made this joke, but I have to say, Andy, it's quite a moment for spy shows. And, you know, I'm currently watching three, Lioness, The Agency, which we're going to talk about today, and Black Doves, which we're going to talk about on Thursday's show. It's coming on Netflix this week. It's Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw.

• 3:00Chris Ryan?

  And I was like, wondering, is this a, is this a, like a kind of sweet Twilight of the deep state moment that we're having? And like, is this like the last three shows before it all gets dismantled? And, and we offload our intelligence gathering to, to big tech? Like, what do you think about that?

• 3:25Andy Greenwald?

  So you think, wait, let me, first of all, I'm, I'm flabbergasted. I thought that you were bringing up the headline of the day. Cause you, in your imaginary role as mentor to a teenage ward.

• 3:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:37Andy Greenwald?

  Would do something different. My guess is like, is I feel like the, the whole aesthetic that you promote is like, kind of like a tough love thing. So I feel like that you wouldn't do that for your own.

• 3:46Chris Ryan?

  You think I promote a tough love aesthetic?

• 3:49Andy Greenwald?

  No, when you talk about your imaginary teenage ward, you definitely imply that you would be more stick than carrot. So my, I thought you were bringing this up being like, this beta president is teaching his son nothing. That you would do something different. I had no idea you were going to pivot this into an examination of the end of the classic spy show.

• 4:12Chris Ryan?

  It's just something that crossed my mind.

• 4:14Andy Greenwald?

  Which is walking back for me.

• 4:16Chris Ryan?

  I will, cause it's like, who's luckier than us right now, right? Like, these are the shows that we love. These are the shows that we, we crave. And we've got frankly, three that are excellent right now. Uh, I don't know. I don't know if you want me to update you on what's going on with Joe and the QRF on Lioness. But Iran better watch their back, dog, because she is leading a very small invasion of their sovereignty.

• 4:43Andy Greenwald?

  Do you consider Lioness a spy show?

• 4:45Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yeah, because the whole premise of Lioness is that these women are supposed to go undercover.

• 4:50Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, that's right.

• 4:51Chris Ryan?

  To expose terrorists or cartel members, or I can't wait to find out what happens in season three if we get one. But Lioness and Agency, which is based on our, one of our favorite all time shows, La Bureau and, and Black Doves. Like, it's just, we got so much espionage going on. Hell, you could even throw Diplomat in there as a kind of foreign affairs show. And it's just really kind of weird to imagine being here a year from now and having Cash Patel have turned, has turned the FBI building into a museum of the deep state.

• 5:26Andy Greenwald?

  Now that it has been eradicated?

• 5:28Chris Ryan?

  He actually said that's what he's gonna do day one.

• 5:30Andy Greenwald?

  Will it be, will they, will he charge tickets?

• 5:33Chris Ryan?

  I hope not. I would like to be a docent.

• 5:36Andy Greenwald?

  Can I just, just someone's side channel thing? Obviously, we're, we're really zeroing in on this big show that we have to talk about.

• 5:41Chris Ryan?

  Please.

• 5:42Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think that your dad would have pardoned you?

• 5:44Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it depends on what, it depends on for what.

• 5:47Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not defensive about my own answer, yeah.

• 5:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, my dad was, I had, I would describe a bit of a wandering youth when it came to academic excellence. And then an interesting experimental twenties. Nothing made him more mad than me getting a tattoo or smoking cigarettes. He begged me not to smoke cigarettes and I did anyway. But, so like, he was way more mad about that than he was about me, like, waiting until the very last second to write a half-assed college essay that got rejected.

• 6:17Andy Greenwald?

  Was he proud of you for becoming one of the best cigarette smokers, though? In the sense that like, some parents are like, I don't want my kid playing tackle football. But if my kid was Jalen Carter, I'd be like, okay, you beat the odds.

• 6:27Chris Ryan?

  I was actually, it's funny you should mention that, because just the other day I was re-recalling a, one of the great drives of my life was getting off work at the Middle East in Boston at like, I was barbacking, but I feel like I had like an earlier barback shift, so I got off at like 10. And driving from Cambridge, Massachusetts, from Central Square to Vermont, where my parents were, for that, for like August, they used to go up there in the summer, powered entirely by Camel Lights and Dunkin' Donuts that I was drinking.

• 7:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 7:01Chris Ryan?

  Dunkin' Donuts coffee at like midnight and driving with the window down as I smoked.

• 7:09Chris Ryan?

  As I chain smoked my way into New England and just arriving in Vermont, can you imagine what I smelled like when I hit that small off-season?

• 7:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I can, I can describe what you smelled like in two words, Ben Affleck.

• 7:27Andy Greenwald?

  It's not that big of a deal. So, but did you roll into Vermont being like, hey, mom and dad, just got here on the power of my own adrenaline. I'm gonna go buy some.

• 7:37Chris Ryan?

  No, by that time, the, the horse had left the barn. Yeah.

• 7:40Andy Greenwald?

  They knew.

• 7:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they knew Robbie.

• 7:45Chris Ryan?

  How are you, man?

• 7:46Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I'm great. I'm great. I'm in London. Still love it. Little weird to just be here more often than I am on the west side of Los Angeles. And I'm here to just deliver one of the most champagne problem complaints of all time, which, which I shared with you, but I feel like I should share publicly.

• 8:05Chris Ryan?

  Absolutely.

• 8:05Andy Greenwald?

  This time because of holiday travel, I flew here from New York. I gotta say, flight's too short.

• 8:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, it's a very short flight.

• 8:12Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it is so short, but they pretend that it's not. They make a whole big deal about being like, turn it off the lights. Like, should we wake you for breakfast? It's, it's one in the morning, ma'am. No, you should not wake me. You should just circle above Greenland for three hours. So that I can be a human being when I try to present my credentials to some guy who also is on your diet of coffee and cigarettes. And Heathrow in three hours. So.

• 8:41Chris Ryan?

  It is a strange experience when you're just like, I wish I had like one more hour of rest on this metal tube that is hurtling over.

• 8:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 8:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, exactly. So otherwise, no, otherwise all good. I had a lot of time to watch television. I watched the agency. I watched Get Millie Black. I don't know if you had a chance to check that out.

• 9:00Chris Ryan?

  I did. I watched the first episode.

• 9:02Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, so maybe we'll talk about that, too. But I do feel like we're beating around the bush because, as you said, it is the end. It's the end of the espionage thriller. There is no more deep state apparatus and we do have at least the agency as a. That's our museum, isn't it?

• 9:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I was, I was, I was struck by the fact that the agency, the, the exterior shots of the US Embassy and I, and the station, the US station, London Station for the CIA is in the same building. It's featured also in Black Doves. It was just like the London spy moment is very strong right now between this and Slow Horses. Greenwald, I was listening to Joe and Rob talk about this show on the way into work today. They were talking about it on the Prestige TV podcast. And for as many different ways as I want to come at this adaptation and this series, because it is, I think it's very notably an adaptation of a, of a incredibly important show to us.

• 10:01Chris Ryan?

  I was struck by their enthusiasm, which I share, but their enthusiasm for it because they had not watched The Bureau. So Joe mentioned like, oh, The Bureau and it's a beloved show. I have not seen it. Rob has not seen it. And so to hear them like newborn deer, you know, step lightly out into the, to the field and, and experience this world for the first time, I was like,

• 10:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 10:26Chris Ryan?

  I want to go back. I want to go back to not knowing, oh, the reason why like this is like this is because this is this or this. And I'm sure, given the, the creative firepower on this show, that there will be turns and twists and that there will be riffs. And it's not like The Bureau is such a closely guarded piece of intellectual property that you couldn't make some, some variations on it, that you couldn't do your own thing. But I was struck by like watching the agency, which I really, really liked and wondering if the barrier to love was the fact that I had seen the original.

• 11:04Andy Greenwald?

  I very much agree with you. I think it's an interesting avenue to drive down. First of all, I do want to get, first of all, I want to get you on the record. It seems like what you're saying is it is important not to engage with the original underlying IP when dealing with an adaptation. Because as you know, this is a subject that I'm passionate about, passionate about. So, thank you, first of all, for your allyship.

• 11:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, as you are at Hogwarts with the Jedi blast shield down, like, don't show me anything.

• 11:33Andy Greenwald?

  Please, my sweet, sweet ignorance. Two, it is without question that, like, and maybe it's annoying, but so maybe it's good that there's another podcast that can, that can give you the fresh eyes perspective. But I have to say it, I texted this to you when I was watching it. I really like the show. I'm excited about the show and I'm impressed by the adaptation. My number one takeaway was, holy shit, Le Bureau is like top 10 Dead or Alive.

• 12:00Chris Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 12:00Andy Greenwald?

  I love that show so deeply that just even hearing some of the familiar melodic riffs of plot made me, took me back to that summer a couple of years ago when we both just dove in and basically we got in at the end. So, except the opposite of Tony Soprano was a good thing because we had all five seasons to just enjoy.

• 12:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 12:22Andy Greenwald?

  The, what seems very smart about the adaptation, let me pivot by saying, like, you don't, well, even before I start to talk about the adaptation, I also think that I would feel the same way as Joe and Rob immediately. Like, I would have started this by saying, holy shit, here we go. I think that we are probably bumping on, A, the memory of the excellence of the original, but also the few deviations that there are in this. And I, we sort of alluded to this and we talked about the trailer, I think it's borne out by the show. The few deviations are smart deviations towards what I think is more of an American palette or an American style of storytelling, if not an American attitude towards international espionage, at least until January 20th, 2025.

• 13:05Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it's noisier.

• 13:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:08Andy Greenwald?

  You know, you're crying a little bit. It's, it's, it's noisier, you know? And one of the things that I love about Le Bureau is how quiet it can be and how subtle it can be. And part of that is because it's, you know, maybe because it's some French characteristic, but also because the Dejé Asse, the agency of, or Le Bureau of the French version. It's French espionage.

• 13:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:30Andy Greenwald?

  It is not the, it's not the biggest elephant in the room like the CIA is. So it's just sort of carry it as a different footfall. And that, that's reflected in the, the tenor of the show. And I sort of, I really admire and, and like that.

• 13:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:43Andy Greenwald?

  And I kind of, and I kind of missed that a little bit in this. But that said, one of the central, central things that Eric Roshan did with his show is that he has this vision. And Le Carre has, it's pieces of Le Carre. And I'm sure you can pull a bunch of other different writers that, that Roshan was pulling from too. But this notion of the spy as the perfect blank canvas to investigate ideas of identity and the performance of being human. The Butterworth brothers, who, that sounds made up every time I say it, and their mother, Mrs. Really understood that that was a central tenet of the show and that, and they, they held on to that very tightly. You can tell. And this version of it, the agency is at its best to me when it is purely exploring that idea.

• 14:28Andy Greenwald?

  Something that it really starts to do in the second episode.

• 14:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so I think that, um, we could talk about a bunch of different things. There are some slight tweaks that they've made. They've introduced the conflict in Ukraine, uh, which obviously was not in the same kind of situation that it was, it is now that back when they made the original series. You know, I think that there are some cool tweaks that they've made with some of the characters that you can see their parallel in, um, in the French show. But I find that like, especially the office politics are quite, quite well done in the agency. One of the things that I loved about the bureau was the fact that it really hammered home. One of my favorite parts about espionage fiction and spy shows and all this stuff is that it's this simple idea.

• 15:16Chris Ryan?

  That you could be on a park bench, right? And you could be listening to a podcast or reading a book or waiting for someone. And then the person on the park bench next to you, or maybe even the person sitting next to you is putting a chalk mark. For a dead drop, or is waiting to meet a source, or is waiting to meet an asset, or is an asset, or that there is this underworld in our world that is taking place right in front of us and we just don't notice it. And Malatru, the hero of the Bureau, represented that so well to me because you would get these shots of him walking around Paris, or you would get these moments of him working, and he's a really unassuming looking guy. Like, you wouldn't blink twice if you saw him. You will blink twice if you see Michael

• 15:58Chris Ryan?

  Fassbender. He is a movie star. He is cut out of granite. He is exercising quite frequently in this show. He is kind of continuing the recognizable Fassbender brand of like warrior monk characters that he is perhaps the best in the world at playing. And I could not get his character from the killer out of my head while I was watching his Paul come home and search his apartment for bugs and sit, you know, while listening to, you know, classic vinyl on his hi-fi. And everything felt very like, almost sociopathic in the

• 16:39Chris Ryan?

  way that his killer character is, whereas for Malatru, it was like, I'm this shuffling, smoking, pondering, introspective lover and thinker. Yeah, yeah. He was the intellectual spy. And I keep waiting for this character to tear somebody's larynx out. You know, like, I keep waiting for him to go full Jason Bourne, which is not a criticism. It's more of just an observation of how the vibe is different in this show.

• 17:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I want to push back only to say that Martian, and that's the American character's name that Fassbender plays, or his codename, his operative name. I will say that he and I live very similar lives in London, just in terms of our aesthetic, in terms of the sort of like monochrome fitted sweats that I wear while I pad around barefoot, listening to classic vinyl and staring at bronze elephant statues while overlooking the Thames. So that does ring true to me. Similarly, we're both hashtag girl dads, you know, who have spent time apart because of work. And maybe the kids don't always understand what we're doing, but you know, we believe it's for the greater good.

• 17:42Chris Ryan?

  And you just dole out that cash and hope it works for the best.

• 17:46Andy Greenwald?

  A million percent. But

• 17:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, so it's different. But again, the difference is good, and I think it ought to be different. I think that, um, let me, let's go through it piece by piece. You mentioned the differences in terms of the setting in the world, because it's not just that this is the CIA, which again is the, one of the biggest players in any of this. And one of the interesting things about Le Piro is that Deja is part of the Five Eyes, but is basically a smaller fish in the bigger pond. Yeah, yeah. Um, and another thing that was kind of brilliant about the show is that Rashant kind of sorta adapted the story from the real world, but with a little bit of a tape delay. So that the early seasons were very much still about conflict in the Middle East,

• 18:33Andy Greenwald?

  and then the rise of Russia as a global nemesis happened within the show in a way that felt very kind of exciting and organic. Yeah. One of the smartest things that the Butterworths and Joe Wright did, and there's a piece on the Hollywood Reporter today interviewing Joe Wright about this, is that they considered this, they considered the pitfalls in a way that I think a lot of rip from the headlines shows don't always, or at least in case of Taylor Sheridan, like, he loves pitfalls. Like, he fucking base jumps at the pitfalls in terms of like, you know, we're messing with real world stuff here, live ammo. So Joe Wright and his team picked a date, right? They picked April of 2023 for the events of this first season. So that they could say, here's where the conflict was in Ukraine, here's what's going

• 19:15Andy Greenwald?

  on in Sudan, here's the role Belarus may or may not be playing in global conflicts, and then extrapolate from there with fictionalized events, which I think is very, very smart. The fast bender thing, I guess, I mean, we're two episodes in. I guess I'm of two minds about it, because there is something that does feel more American about it in a way that makes sense, in the way that he is obsessively driven. Yeah. You know, this may be a strange analogy to make, but one thing you and I have been talking about is now that we are both, you know, doing more work in the UK or working with people in the UK that like, people here don't check their email as much, which I think is really, really, really healthy. People don't send the third email that's like, thanks for replying to my previous email.

• 19:59Andy Greenwald?

  And Fastbender is the militarized embodiment of that third email.

• 20:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:04Andy Greenwald?

  Like, he is so, so extra. And I'm curious to see where that, where that leads, you know, in terms of the embodiment of the show, but also the show's aesthetic. And one of the other things that they've done, you know, in a way that kind of makes sense is I feel like the cheap version of making something American or Western would be like, take all the subtext and make it text. Take all of the subtle stuff that Malatru did and make it a monologue, you know, a clever monologue. And there's a lot of what you and I would probably call Tony Gilroyisms in the Butterworth scripts, and I kind of dig it. But I, I think that in the case of the show, again, it makes sense for the subtle parts

• 20:44Andy Greenwald?

  to be more weaponized, to be more action forward, to, so that he is, because the whole plot where he's teaching in the show Danny what it means to be a spy, like, that's verbatim.

• 20:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:57Andy Greenwald?

  Well, no, verbatim means word for word. It's not verbatim, but it is pulled directly from the French version.

• 21:01Chris Ryan?

  That and the coyote plot, which is like a, an asset in the field who has refused in the past to train under the influence of alcohol. Like, this, this person is in, in the program and does not want to, to like, experience alcohol at all, not even as a, a sort of like a test of his ability to hold up under interrogation while feeling that way. So that is both in The Bureau. The loosely, you know, like the Nadia plot from The Bureau is now played by Jodie Turner Smith, who plays a Sudanese educator, a professor who is working in Ethiopia, and that's where

• 21:41Chris Ryan?

  Fastbender's Paul slash Martian character meets her and then leaves her and, and eventually they hook back up in London.

• 21:50Andy Greenwald?

  There's something that is just, and do you agree with me about this, that like the scenes, especially like the, the, maybe at the restaurant, but spy on the people scene? Like, that, that again, that was in the original, but... I guess I just kind of don't, I really didn't bump on the like the bullet pointing of the lines because it is just so much more jacked. The show is more jacked like Fast Bender, which I didn't mind. I should also say, and I'm sorry, we're kind of going at this from a bunch of different angles, but you threw me with Cash Patel's museum of old deep state technology riff. Broad, broad, broad, broad strokes before we get even, I know we've started specific and now we're going broad and I apologize for that, but like this show does not hand hold.

• 22:35Andy Greenwald?

  This show, I keep saying like, oh, they made it simpler or they made it more action filled. It is not a simple show. It is not a handholding show. It is not something that feels like it has been noted to death by the same streaming prestige TV note machine that makes everything kind of basic. It is naughty, it is self-serious, but it is also heavy and feels weighty like a good book, Mike. There were moments in this, again, especially in the second episode, which I think is a lot stronger than the first, where there was a really kind of unique marriage between this plot that we love, but also Joe Wright's camera pyrotechnics, the quality of the actors

• 23:13Andy Greenwald?

  on screen and the pacing, which just felt like it was aesthetically considered and handmade. And so again, like just to have a show like that, this is what we want, right? Like this is sort of the overarching theme for the even talking about this and maybe even a little bit of Get Millie Black, like thank God, there's a smart genre show for adults on the air. Then there are other things about it that make me, give me a little bit of pause, but I don't know if you want to stay on the positives.

• 23:38Chris Ryan?

  Let's stay on the positives. I think I'll, I'll continue where you're going with that about the Americanization of it.

• 23:45Andy Greenwald?

  And by the way, it's all made by Brits. It's so bizarre.

• 23:48Chris Ryan?

  Well, that's the thing is that Joe Wright and the Butterworths are British. Michael Fassbender is obviously from Northern Ireland. You know, Jeffrey Wright, Richard Gere, Catherine Waterston, John McGarrett, all American, but there is a British actor playing an American in a crucial moment in the first two episodes.

• 24:07Andy Greenwald?

  He's very good.

• 24:08Chris Ryan?

  There is a kind of a. Blank westernness to it. When I, and I don't mean like western as like cowboy genre. I mean western as um the western world. You know, I read a very good article in the Wall Street Journal by John Jurgensen about the making of this show that published over the weekend. And um it's

• 24:30Andy Greenwald?

  Chris.

• 24:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:32Andy Greenwald?

  Is you reading the Wall Street Journal like Joe and Mika going to Mar-a-Lago? Are you just trying to like open yourself up? That was such a, you know, I read something really interesting in The Federalist. Um, I figured it was some late reading. Anyway, go on. I respect, I respect the

• 24:48Chris Ryan?

  You know, in the third hour of Rogan, they kind of touch on this a little bit. Um, no, it's an article about the making of the show. It's mostly a profile of Chris McCarthy, who has, is sort of, we can get into the Showtime Paramount part of this in a bit. Chris McCarthy runs, uh, for now, the Paramount TV business. They spent a lot of money on the show. They got a lot of big actors.

• 25:08Andy Greenwald?

  Clearly.

• 25:09Chris Ryan?

  Um, that the way, if, if you're watching the series and you notice a kind of, um, to paraphrase Courtney Love, so real, it's, it's beyond fake, you know, look to the office in the, uh, the London station. It's because that's a, like a incredibly expensive video wall that is projecting London at various points in the day and time and weather, you know, soundstage that they built in London. So that is like, I think something like a $12 million investment to make it look like it's day or night or raining or whatever. And, you know, if you're watching this and you're like, we know maybe because we've

• 25:52Chris Ryan?

  seen the original series, but you may look and be like, wow, Catherine Waterston doesn't have a ton to do just yet. And

• 25:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 26:00Chris Ryan?

  We know how this show is going to evolve, probably, but I, I find that the level of commitment to it and also the investment in it is really, really heartening.

• 26:10Andy Greenwald?

  It's a really good point because again, one of the benefits of knowing basically and probably what the story is going to be is that we see people already and we're like, oh, I can't wait till X happens. To them, or that's going to be an interesting journey for why. Um, but we were watching the French show, we didn't know who any of the actors were outside of Matthew Kassavitz. So there was no sense of prominence, like this person is going to reveal themselves to be a major player or have an interesting arc. That was one of the joys of discovery with that show. With this, you're sort of like seeding actor landmines in plain sight.

• 26:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:41Andy Greenwald?

  Like you don't cast these people unless you're going to give them something to do. And that takes in, that requires a financial commitment to have them stick around and be there from the beginning. Which again, that is also feels kind of rare. It does feel like this kind of protected jewel that somehow survived all of the corporate shenanigans that led to Showtime being Showtime on Paramount Plus. Or whatever it is now.

• 27:02Chris Ryan?

  And well, so this brings me to my other point that is, uh, yeah, I really hope that the show is successful. Because one of the things I love about the bureau is it's multi-seasonal arcs for these characters. And the way in which you think you're looking at a background player who becomes the hero. Or you think that this show is about one thing, about maybe a man trying to live one life rather than many lives as a spy. And it becomes about something else. And, uh, I, I wonder whether or not this is the perfect place for this show.

• 27:39Chris Ryan?

  Because as, as obviously based on their commitment to letting Taylor Sheridan cook as many meals as he wants at once. For as many seasons as he feels like he needs to. David Glasser, who's Taylor Sheridan's producer, is one of the producers on this series. It is, to me, I, I would be very surprised if we don't get multiple seasons of this. I would be, the only thing that would shock me is, is just like, I guess fast bender just signed up for that. You know, like he's somebody who has been pretty selective in the, in what he works on over the last couple of years. He's done kneecap this year, he's the killer last year. You know, like, I think he has become somebody who is just like, I work when the spirit moves me, but not because I need to like grind out something every nine months.

• 28:24Chris Ryan?

  And this will be a demanding role for him that will take a long time. But one of the things I'm really hopeful about is that we don't have like a two-year wait for the next season of the, of the bureau.

• 28:35Andy Greenwald?

  That's a point I didn't even consider. I mean, it is a really interesting test of what has been a faltering prestige TV economy in the sense that we seem to have diverged, like two roads diverged from what was supposed to be this great promised contemporary moment. And the roads were, you know, starry, high stakes, high budget, auteurish content and TV shows. And what we've seen over the last few years with projects ranging from, you know, biggest genre stuff like House of the Dragon to suddenly surprise successful stuff like Ted Lasso or Severance, that the people involved in making the former category

• 29:16Andy Greenwald?

  of show, auteurish, prestige-y, expensive stuff, cannot keep up with the yearly demands in television. They just don't do it. So this show is coming at us with, Fast Bender is a movie star and

• 29:28Chris Ryan?

  Richard Gere is one of the biggest movie stars of the last 50 years.

• 29:32Andy Greenwald?

  And acts like it. He's so fucking sick in the show. I love him. I love everything about him being on it. And, you know, it's interesting, this, you know, Wikipedia isn't real life and I probably could have found out more info than this, but I did note that Joe Wright, you know, major film director and Butterworths, who are major film writers, absolutely wrote and directed the first two episodes and at least according to what's been released, TBA'd the rest of them for the season.

• 30:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I don't know. I mean, so you're, as you've, you've definitely found out, there is a different, difference in the culture of how shows get made in England versus how they get made in the States, right? Like in the UK, there is a primary author, a creator writer, who often writes the entire series. Now, they may have a staff and they may have people who are contributing, but for instance, Black Doves, which is coming next week, is written and created by Joe Barton, who did Giri Haji. And, you know, there are different directors, but he wrote the series.

• 30:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 30:35Chris Ryan?

  I know that the Butterworths are incredibly in-demand screenwriters and have many projects going and also are accomplished playwrights. So I don't know if they also have time to write eight, 10 episodes of the agency every year, but that'll be an interesting to see the hybrid model and everything.

• 30:57Andy Greenwald?

  But I guess my point is, Do we need them? I mean, that'll be that'll be kind of interesting because the bureau didn't have until the very end when OJ R came, OJ R came in, who, you know, is now in the Oscar race for what's the name of the movie? Elena

• 31:14Chris Ryan?

  Amelia Perez.

• 31:15Andy Greenwald?

  Amelia Perez, I'm sorry, I've not seen the movie, but and we, you know, no need to rehash that again, but it's still one of the most interesting things that has ever happened in the history of television where a creator turned

• 31:24Chris Ryan?

  I mean, you should rehash it because I don't think people know.

• 31:26Andy Greenwald?

  Well, we've talked about it a bunch of times, but like the thing about the bureau that was so exceptional is that in many ways, it's like it was the most, it, it, this feels like a little bit grandiose, but I kind of stand by it, that it was one of, if not the most exciting shows to watch on TV since The Wire in the way that it grew cumulatively in what you were talking about, like you think it's one thing, but it's 10 things deeper than that. And each season stretches its arms wider to take in more of the world, or in the case of The Wire, Baltimore, and it somehow pulls it off. And you just care so deeply about secondary tertiary characters and are continually surprised and compelled by their depth. And then it did something that no TV show has ever done,

• 32:08Andy Greenwald?

  and I'm not sure if any TV show ever should, which is that Rashad was going to end his series after five seasons, looked at the landscape of finales, decided that they mostly failed, which this would make, you know, by the way, Stick the Landing, available on Delta flights. So if anything was ever going to get me to do more, I was like, goddamn.

• 32:27Chris Ryan?

  That's so funny, because you always get so mad when you don't see the watch on Delta. You're like

• 32:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I check every time I'm on an airplane. I was shocked. And let me tell you, I bet every single person who was sleeping on the four hour flight or whatever across the Atlantic was missing out on hearing the 18 minute excerpt of my podcast with Amanda by Girls or whatever it was. Anyway.

• 32:51Andy Greenwald?

  For the finale, he decided the thing that link that looking at the looking at the history of TV finales, most of them did not stick the landing, whatever, however you say in French, and in his view is because of sentimentality, that the creator felt too close to his or her creations to give them honest resolution. And so he invited the award winning filmmaker Jacques Audiard to take the show and end it. And he gave him carte blanche to end it, however he, Audiard, saw fit, and that Rochan would just sort of offer, you know, boots on the ground, help and advice to getting him in a position to end the show. But whatever he wanted to do, he could do. And it led to totally intense

• 33:32Andy Greenwald?

  and insane and meditative, and I think quite moving, two hour finale that feels conceptually and aesthetically completely different than everything that came before. So anyway,

• 33:42Chris Ryan?

  It's one of the greatest endings to a show I've ever seen.

• 33:45Andy Greenwald?

  It is. And I hope that in like four to seven years, we're talking about how whomever came in to land this plane, that they're inspired by that as well.

• 33:54Chris Ryan?

  Joe Wright's like, I'm right here, man.

• 33:57Andy Greenwald?

  What are you talking about? You know how hard it is to have a steady gig? But do you think, I guess I'll just, here's a question for you. I realize you're about to throw one to me. We have recently been watching a lot of pilots and starting a lot of shows. And I think that we are both to varying degrees have some fatigue from that. How do you feel about engaging with a show that is starting? And I think that what like Joe and Rob and other people listening to this podcast who are new to this property might be feeling is like, oh, this one has legs. This one feels good. Are we blind to that because we're already thinking about the finale? I mean, we're just talking about it even in a podcast about the premiere in a hypothetical way? Or are we doing the worst possible thing

• 34:39Andy Greenwald?

  where we are judging this against our five years of experience? Because I do, I do want to, this is the most over intellectualized talky way of saying this, but like, there's a vibe to these shows that we have been clamoring for, regardless of the fact that it's just a sick international spy show, but like, okay, we are delivering you something with enough thought and intention to clearly reward investment. Like they have Cast it, they have built a machine that is going to go wide. You know, you don't get that feeling that like they're worried about getting canceled.

• 35:09Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, even even as you're watching these first two episodes, like the appearance of Dominic West as.

• 35:16Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, speaking of the wire, exactly.

• 35:17Chris Ryan?

  The head of the CIA who is an uncredited or at least unpublicized cameo, who I imagine to to our point about like, keep an eye on who's in this show because they aren't going to stay in the same place. Um, I was like, oh shit, you know, like that I want more of this. I want more kind of like creative casting in that regard. I, I think that for me, the the moment that I love the most in the first two episodes is going to be, uh, pretty, pretty stupid, but it is illustrative of what I think I'm looking for to give me more than just like a kind of secondhand feeling, a secondhand sensation of watching an Americanized and

• 35:59Chris Ryan?

  westernized version of a French show that I love is when, first of all, Jeffrey Wright, it's the best thing on this show right now. Like he is absolutely doing the most Jeffrey Wright shit of haggard, deeply, deeply, deeply intellectual, but also like deeply soulful, like eyes and performance style. Um, all the stuff that's in the office, it's the best conceived thing I think Joe Wright did with this series is the vastness of the office, the viper pit attitude of people who are cutting each other off while they're walking to elevators or double crossing one another over candy bowls and coffee machines. And

• 36:42Chris Ryan?

  it's just an incredible representation of a, of a, of a office as a microcosm. And there's a moment when fast bender's Paul character, who is reintegrating back into the London station after being away for six years, much like Malatru in the, in the bureau. Is talking to Jeffrey Wright's character Bosco and he says the Jeffrey Wright character is like, you may have post-mission like stress disorder. And Fast Benders character says, is that a Joy Division album? Which obviously is a joke geolocated to my interests, but I was also like, ah, a real person has emerged, you know, because like Fast Benders is so blank and is so good

• 37:25Chris Ryan?

  at wearing like, these are plain clothes that no one will notice, even though I am the most beautiful man in four continents, you know, like, he is so good at doing blank that to have him have a personality and a sense of humor, I was like, yes, okay, these guys know each other, these guys make familiar ball breaking jokes to one another, they know what Joy Division is, like, they are like, kind of like, I need a little bit more coloring in, you get that from Magaro and his lumbar supporting chair, you get that from Catherine Waterston and her weird like, I don't know whether to hug you or shake your hand, or like, am I in love with you after all of our intense Zoom conversations? Or am I just like your handler? Like, all that stuff is so good.

• 38:11Chris Ryan?

  I want them to color these characters in and I know that they will because I know the source material, but they can color them in with any crayon they want. The broad strokes of the story, I'm sure they'll keep, but I think that they can do a lot with the characters and that's what I've got my eye on.

• 38:27Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's a great observation. I totally agree with you that the show comes alive in the first episode when they go into the office. I think John Magaro, who, I've had Magaro stock for a while, by the way.

• 38:35Chris Ryan?

  I mean, that's why I read the Wall Street Journal is to find out who you're gonna stock in.

• 38:41Chris Ryan?

  It's a very small part of the journal.

• 38:43Andy Greenwald?

  It's a very, very small column next to the S and P.

• 38:48Andy Greenwald?

  The dynamic in the office is great. One of the things that the Bureau did so well was the bureaucracy of the Bureau in the sense that like, these characters were often having intense conversations in the cafeteria line and it was so deeply French that they were getting like, beautiful meals at lunchtime, including shredded carrot salad that we joked about all the time.

• 39:05Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah, I forgot about the salad.

• 39:07Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like there was a nod to that in the scene when Bosco appears to be eating cake in the office before somebody comes and grabs him. I thought that the- My favorite scene, I think, I mean, the show generally just amps up in the second episode, and I think that maybe that's, what's his name, Eric Glasser's input.

• 39:24Chris Ryan?

  David Glasser, yeah.

• 39:25Andy Greenwald?

  Or it's like, David Glasser, sorry, where it's like, a lot of this was happening in the bureau, but I don't remember one of the fake Doctors Without Borders doctors jumping on the back of an abandoned military vehicle and using a howitzer to mow down an entire battalion of opposing troops. That definitely felt a little.

• 39:42Chris Ryan?

  I was wondering if that was like a little, like, if they were like, God, where are we gonna get an actor who can convincingly portray an army ranger? And then David Glasser was like, say no more, and broke out a binder of dudes who have like incredible neck muscles, yeah.

• 40:03Andy Greenwald?

  He was Joe Dumars with a second phone, being like, I got a couple guys.

• 40:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they're in Iran currently, but I can get them here in 20 hours.

• 40:10Andy Greenwald?

  But again, like, that seems fine to me as an adjustment for the American slash Western version of the show, as long as you keep the things that they keep, or steer into the things that they're steering into, like the scene when John McGaro is brought into the Situation Room with Richard Gere, and Richard Gere's like, who the fuck is this? He's like, I'm Owen. He's like, what the fuck is Owen doing here? That's Gilroy-coded, and I'm here for it, and I love it. I also think you're making the point about the way Joe Wright and his production designer designed that incredibly beautiful glassy office, and I did get the sense, in a positive way, that there were a lot of conversations about what spycraft means now, and it's an interesting hybrid, because a lot of what we see, and you and I probably see all of

• 40:54Andy Greenwald?

  it, when it comes to spy shows, or spy movies, or spy books, there's a dividing line between the people who are like, let's embrace the way spycraft is now, in a world where it's impossible to have secrets, or let's just do a period piece, where, you know, you're changing your identity, and you're shredding documents, and you're doing dead drops. The bureau did this really well, which is to say that both are happening at the same time. You need the old ways and the new ways, and you try to have to have a, sort of have to have a hybrid.

• 41:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but dudes still had like flip phones in the bureau, right?

• 41:21Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly, and so what this show does, again, I think it's smart, it's leaning into it, is so much of this work is done on screens. Now, the video conferencing was in the bureau, but like, there were so many screens, including Richard Gere zooming, basically doing what our podcast, the way we're doing it right now with Dominic West, made me feel like there was some thought about.

• 41:44Andy Greenwald?

  The 2023 of it, like, there was a sense of

• 41:49Andy Greenwald?

  small detail. Like, I've just been, I haven't read it yet, because I can't travel with a hardcover book, but there's a Murakami book out.

• 41:55Chris Ryan?

  What's going on with you in packing?

• 41:58Andy Greenwald?

  This is good. I travel way too much right now.

• 42:00Chris Ryan?

  Wait, so I-

• 42:01Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not gonna bring a hardcover book.

• 42:02Chris Ryan?

  My experience with you, though, is that you bring, like, like, a giant wardrobe with you.

• 42:07Andy Greenwald?

  I was in, that's when I have people in black cars picking me up, so it sounds like I'm being-

• 42:14Chris Ryan?

  You're about to get fucking redacted, yeah.

• 42:17Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I'm a wooden, that's what I'm, they find out if I'm a wooden duck. Are you a podcaster, or are you a writer on this show? No, when I, when I'm, like, getting the, the nice, you know, thanks HBO lifestyle, and, like, just checking all the bags, but the first half of my travel right now was East Coast Thanksgiving, like, a bunch of cities, Amtrak, rental car, like, I had to downsize.

• 42:39Chris Ryan?

  You were doing the work, I understand. So you just have, like, one, like, over-the-shoulder bag, you know?

• 42:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I'm basically like Martian, I'm ready to go at any time. But, um, the reason I brought this Murakami thing is, like, it is a novel about, like, a city with giant walls, where people can't remember things or speak to each other, and all the interviews, he's just like, "Do you know, I feel that we lost some sense of connection during the recent global pandemic." Like, no fucking shit! But, all this is to say, I feel a little bit of that Murakami quote in this show, which I like.

• 43:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:13Andy Greenwald?

  Like, that for all of the living in someone else's skin, there's also the sense of, uh, deep impersonality, like, you aren't actually yourself, you aren't actually talking to people, no one is who they say they are, and that does feel very contemporary, in a way that all good spy fiction is about the moment that it's being created, and not just about the storyline.

• 43:32Chris Ryan?

  He says from a Zoom angle in his, like, weird, weird room. You're right, and I also cannot wait for the third episode, because I don't know if Joe Wright directed it. I really like Joe Wright's stuff. Joe Wright loves symmetrical lights.

• 43:49Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:50Chris Ryan?

  Sharp angles, men standing against architecture that reveals something about their interiority. He takes his time to do that kind of stuff, and I like it, too. Uh, I love it in Anna Karenina, I love it in Hannah, like, I love when he does that stuff, but I do think that this show would benefit from-

• 44:14Chris Ryan?

  A more straightforward visual language, maybe. You know, like a kind of like, here is, Michael Fassbender has walked into the room and Richard Gere is there. That's, the scene is sold already. I don't need like, oh, check it out, how the pens are all symmetrical, you know?

• 44:27Andy Greenwald?

  I, I, I agree with you, and I found it to be bordering on claustrophobic at times.

• 44:31Chris Ryan?

  Get these directors out of here, man, you know what I mean?

• 44:33Andy Greenwald?

  Just make a TV show. I mean, you're not wrong about that, but like, the, there was a moment, this is probably the last thing we should say about the show, but for the moment. But the opening credits, uh, which I believe are, it's Jack White's cover of the U2 song Love is Blindness.

• 44:51Andy Greenwald?

  Turned up way too loud for normal speakers.

• 44:53Chris Ryan?

  Well, also, shout out to the, the end of the first episode where the last line is, "Love is blind," and then "Love is Blindness" kicks in.

• 45:01Andy Greenwald?

  There was, I, I, I'll be frank with you, I, I ended up really liking the show, but when I watched those opening credits, I was like, what if no one involved in this has any taste?

• 45:08Chris Ryan?

  Well, that to me was just like, can we have, was Paramount being like, we should have our own Slow Horses.

• 45:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:15Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean?

• 45:16Andy Greenwald?

  That's a piece of it. I mean, you, you mentioned that we're living in the golden age of spy shows set in London, and there is the Slow Horses effect, where like, that is such a hit, beyond its genre, and recognized at the Emmys and stuff, that there is definitely some coattail riding, and that is not, that's not dumb, to try to market it that way, or to try to appeal to that demographic, even though, I mean, there, there's, there are many types of spy fiction, but I think generally, they are either knock-around, humanity-driven fuck-ups, but slightly funny and interesting, which is the Slow Horses, some of my favorite movies are like that, um, the, uh, hopscotch.

• 45:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, sneakers.

• 45:54Andy Greenwald?

  With Walter Matthau, or sneakers, or there's the like, we are all priests in the conclave of identity, you know, which is like.

• 46:06Andy Greenwald?

  And.

• 46:06Chris Ryan?

  That's boring, yeah.

• 46:08Andy Greenwald?

  And we worship a vengeful god, you know, and this is definitely more in that.

• 46:12Chris Ryan?

  You have no idea what, what I have to do to keep the blanket of freedom snug around you.

• 46:17Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you, Director Patel.

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• 47:21Chris Ryan?

  Do you want to talk a little bit about Get Millie Black?

• 47:24Andy Greenwald?

  I do because I feel like you had suggested there was kind of a rubric for this of like getting exactly what we, literally the two of us, want in TV.

• 47:34Chris Ryan?

  I am exhausted right now, and in a great way. But like, I fucking love TV right now. I think that this will be an interesting year because I wonder whether there is now so much television that is at least of competent level that like you're going to see a lot of diversity across different best of the year lists.

• 47:52Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I hope so.

• 47:53Chris Ryan?

  I noted that the New York Times TV, like best of the year TVs, did not mention my two favorite shows, you know? So I was like-

• 48:02Andy Greenwald?

  Really? I haven't checked that yet.

• 48:03Chris Ryan?

  But I was like, that is, that is a very interesting development that I did not, we have, we have now split away from like group think, I think in a way that's pretty, pretty good, but it's also going to make it harder to say, oh, obviously this was the year of this, you know? But I do think that we are embarrassed for choice, and I think a lot of people are. I think depending on what you like. You have two or three things. Now, I never really expected a moment where there would be a incredible cop show like on HBO, like Get Millie Black. Incredible. I've watched one episode. I enjoyed it.

• 48:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:39Chris Ryan?

  Three or four different spy shows on and also, you know, Landman and also, you know, finishing Say Nothing and all this other stuff.

• 48:49Andy Greenwald?

  Chris, are you saying that your top 10 list will be the Ann Seltzer poll of the TV landscape? No hurting. You're just, you're just one brave.

• 49:00Chris Ryan?

  My Ann Seltzer poll would definitely be Landman at number one, plus nine points.

• 49:03Andy Greenwald?

  That totally would be. So.

• 49:06Chris Ryan?

  White women are coming home for Landman.

• 49:10Andy Greenwald?

  But speaking of the opposite of white women coming home, Get Millie Black.

• 49:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:13Andy Greenwald?

  HBO and UK Channel 4 co-production. I feel like we have for. Shout out my hosts.

• 49:23Andy Greenwald?

  Channel 5. As soon as this podcast is done, I can't wait to fire up Jamie's Monday nights and early December meals because my guy Jamie Oliver literally has a bespoke show for every week of the year. I feel like for years on this podcast, whenever we've had like mailbags or the opportunity to do this, I feel like even going back further to when I was doing columns and stuff in Greenland, like we have expressed the desire for two things. One, a chicken recipe that stays dry from start to finish. No, okay, three things. Two, crime shows with real senses of place set in cities or countries where, much like the great, you know, world crime literature has done for us, like that actually give us a real feeling

• 50:08Andy Greenwald?

  for a place and locals only, kind of almost like the Bourdain crime show of a given place.

• 50:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:14Andy Greenwald?

  We've also often said, we'd like to see some of our favorite writers, given the chance, novelists, to tell a TV story. And with Get Millie Black, we have both of those things. It is a cop show set in Kingston, Jamaica in the present day, and it is created and at least the first episode is written by Marlon James, who is a novelist. He wrote A Brief History of Seven Killings, a book that you and I both really.

• 50:38Chris Ryan?

  Where is my Brief History of Seven Killings adaptation?

• 50:43Andy Greenwald?

  That, I believe, died on the vine. I know it was, it was at Netflix, it was at Amazon.

• 50:47Chris Ryan?

  I think it was at Amazon.

• 50:48Andy Greenwald?

  I, I would love for it to come back, but in the meantime, he adapted this himself from a short story he wrote. And, man, it's fucking cool, is my review of the show. I really, really, really liked it. And there are some caveats, but I feel like they are the caveats of what I most want, which is writers who don't usually spend their time making TV, making TV.

• 51:10Chris Ryan?

  So you get a lot of voiceover.

• 51:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. You get a lot of voiceover. There are scenes that are clearly cobbled together in ADR. You're dealing with like, a scope of storytelling that it's possible that like, sometimes you get a sense that the show is writing checks that its production can't cash.

• 51:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:27Andy Greenwald?

  There's a disconnect, in a way, between the imagination of the story and the production. But I'm cool with it. Like, in an era of so much corporatized streamlined IP stuff, like, it's handmade, you know? And I know that the last time I said this feels handmade was disclaimer episode one, and that's...

• 51:44Chris Ryan?

  Presumed innocent episode.

• 51:46Andy Greenwald?

  No, that's the finest television show of the year. But, but anyway, I really recommend this. So, just as a brief, you know, just for people, I do not get the sense that the show has been heavily promoted.

• 52:01Chris Ryan?

  Yes, that is true. And, and that is a consequence of both the sheer volume of stuff we have on streamers right now, but also especially, I think it affects international programming. And we are in, like, nobody has it better than us, whether you're watching My Brilliant Friend, or you're watching Millie Black, or you're watching Cleo on Netflix, or you're watching a thousand other shows from all over the world. Like, the truly unique thing about this moment is our access to international programming. It's unprecedented in television history.

• 52:39Andy Greenwald?

  This, so Get Millie Black, by the way, it says, at least online, that the show was filmed in 2022. So I don't know, there was delayed by strikes or just the glut of like the runway to get things on.

• 52:50Chris Ryan?

  Well, they were probably trying to line up with the agency's 2023 kind of, you know.

• 52:55Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. They're giving it a lot of thought. It was about a Jamaican-born police officer named Millie Black, played by Tamara Lawrence, British actress, who was working as, she's awesome. She has a long voiceover backstory. By the way, much like Dune Prophecy, this begins with like 15 minutes of why isn't this the show? But it's actually much more compelling because it's written by Marlon James and then it becomes a cop show. There's kind of a misdirect where it's like, this is going to be a searing story about family and identity. And the, you know, regressive social, sexual politics of Jamaica. And then it is all of that, but it's also a fucking cop show. So it's like, thank you for giving me everything. Anyway, she is shipped off as a child to London and then comes home to deal with some family stuff

• 53:39Andy Greenwald?

  and also immediately is thrown into a case. And that kind of is my favorite thing about the show. There's, you can see the bones of a different version of it that might have been a, might have been also a good show, you know, and more of like a family drama.

• 53:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:53Andy Greenwald?

  The fact that, that, that what motivated Marlon James and what got HBO and Channel 4, whoever else interested was the opportunity to do both. That's the ambition that I almost like most about the show because it's just, it goes so slow for 10 minutes and then it lurches forward so fast that I almost thought I had missed an episode.

• 54:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's not, a Trojan horse would indicate that eventually down the line, this show will reveal things about like this person's family, this person's identity, this person's relationship to colonialism, whatever, which there are references to in this first episode.

• 54:32Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:32Chris Ryan?

  I definitely think that if this show had like an issue, it was like the two-track thing and also the collision of, Marlon James's books are incredibly dense and they're written in the vernacular of the person who is the POV character of any given moment. Like especially in Seven Killings, you have to almost teach yourself language as you're reading the book because each character has such a good distinct way of communicating. I felt like the collision between his authorial presence and just television as a medium was. Fascinating and occasionally like a little bit laborious, but like I think I got it and I was getting into it as the first episode ended. There is a version of this that's just Millie of Kingstown, uh, you know, like.

• 55:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:18Chris Ryan?

  And, and I, I would, and, and I would watch, uh, but I'm also here for, for this version of it as well.

• 55:26Andy Greenwald?

  I also, I mean, you said Tamara Lawrence is great. I really like the performance of China McQueen, who plays Millie's sister, who is presumed dead, uh, by the events of the opening. I really, really liked, uh, Gershwin Usas, who plays her partner on the force. And it's just, you know, I'll, I'll just circle back to where we started, which is like, one of my favorite ways to travel the world, at least before I started fucking flying across oceans all the time, was through crime fiction.

• 55:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:55Andy Greenwald?

  Like the John Burdette books, Taking Me to Bangkok, or, um.

• 56:00Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, all those New York Review of Books.

• 56:01Andy Greenwald?

  Jean Claude Izzo and Marseille.

• 56:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly. Izzo.

• 56:05Andy Greenwald?

  Um, this, the, some of the great reading experiences of my life. And so to have a show, which is like, yeah, these people who made the show and Merlin James in particular, and also I believe the director, um, uh, Tanya Hamilton is also Jamaican born, like they know this place. And here we are in it and the buildings and the way that the, the relationship the cops have to the community, uh, the way they move through the world is so interesting. It is transporting. And yet also there's that familiar crutch of like, every police station anywhere in the world has the captain who's just getting too old for this shit and feels like they shouldn't be messing around and, you know, going in without backup or whatever. And then this one also has Gendry Baratheon. So.

• 56:47Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 56:47Andy Greenwald?

  Have I sold, have I sold you yet?

• 56:50Chris Ryan?

  I hope people check it out. On Thursday's show, Andy and I are going to be talking about a new Netflix series, Black Doves, that's coming. I mentioned that earlier. More spy, more stars. This one is Ben Whishaw and Keira Knightley. This one has a different vibe to it and I'm very excited to see Andy's reaction to it. I'm very excited to talk about it with him. We also probably will hit Skeleton Crew, which is the new Star Wars series on Disney Plus from John Watts. And it starts Jude Law. So, um.

• 57:19Andy Greenwald?

  You know, I feel about Ben Wish all the way. I feel about Brian Tyree Henry and Eternals, right?

• 57:24Chris Ryan?

  You just want to play football with him?

• 57:26Andy Greenwald?

  I just think he's like our greatest, one of our greatest actors. I also, I don't think we said this at the top. If my audio is a little wonky this week, I blame it on my packing skills. I'll be in better shape.

• 57:35Chris Ryan?

  You know, honestly, you sound really good.

• 57:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but that's you listening. I don't know what, you know.

• 57:39Chris Ryan?

  Also, you know, it doesn't matter because you, you sound sharp.

• 57:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 57:44Chris Ryan?

  Your takes.

• 57:44Andy Greenwald?

  Do you, do you know how hard I'm gonna crash as soon as we end this podcast?

• 57:48Chris Ryan?

  We're gonna stop recording.

• 57:50Andy Greenwald?

  I've been working all day talking and now I'm just talking. So this, this wick is about to run out.

• 57:54Chris Ryan?

  We're gonna stop recording, but I am going to do a two hour voiceover for you describing Cooper Dejean and his, his play against Baltimore.

• 58:01Andy Greenwald?

  Why would we talk about that? You're talking about the end of the deep state when our love affair.

• 58:07Chris Ryan?

  I'm longingly talking about the end of the deep state.

• 58:10Andy Greenwald?

  With, with, our love affair with Brian Chalkins is just beginning.

• 58:15Andy Greenwald?

  Like, do you know what, like, people listen to this podcast know that I have a tortured emotional relationship to sports. As hard as it was for me to miss the Eagles Ravens game yesterday because I was asleep, there is a great, great, great joy in waking up in the like the, the inky pre-dawn morning and just learn that Cooper Dejean picked up Derrick Henry and put him down.

• 58:41Chris Ryan?

  We live in a world where we get a Jamaican cop show, multiple spy shows, and we have a white defensive back on the Eagles.

• 58:52Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know what everyone's going to down about.

• 58:53Chris Ryan?

  Who is the reincarnation of Andre Waters. I don't, I don't know what to say, man. It's wonderful to see you. I will see you later this week. We will continue this cross continental conversation. And then, you know, coming up, we have a lot of really great stuff because we have the end of the year. So we have best episode and best TV of the year. Very excited for that. We are starting to film our episodes. So people should keep an eye out for when we start uploading these to a destination to be made.

• 59:21Andy Greenwald?

  Did my HMU budget get approved?

• 59:22Chris Ryan?

  Your HMU budget has been approved. Yeah. We're just gonna, but we're gonna do it in post if that's cool.

• 59:28Andy Greenwald?

  No, that's fine. I just wanted to do every podcast where that with the meme of me painting my clown makeup on.

• 59:35Chris Ryan?

  It's my favorite. Andy, great to see you. Thank you to Kai McMullin for producing us. We'll talk to you on Thursday.

• 59:52Speaker 03

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