You can fool enough of the people for long enough that a lousy series can get a second season. The Agency airs on the utterly unwieldy platform of “Paramount+ with Showtime,” which means it does not air on Showtime or Paramount+, but if you subscribe to both, you can watch the former on the latter. Somehow, despite that sentence making little sense, the promised combination of Michael Fassbender, Richard Gere, Jodie Turner-Smithand Jeffrey Wright got “a record number” of viewers to watch the premiere on the platform. Paramount executives rushed to boast of the record and greenlight a second season despite reviews that called the show tedious and marveled at how one could waste that level of topline cast. But that’s just one more reason why Paramount Studios is the first major studio to collapse in the face of the streaming wars and will be owned by Skydance before 2025 is up.
To be fair, Paramount is desperate for anything that can be considered a net positive without the word “Yellow” in the title (Yellowjackets being the far superior of the two). Moreover, you can’t blame audiences for checking out the premiere in droves since the series is already based on the French language hit series The Bureau, and the company’s last massive hit before its Yellow period was the spy thriller Homeland. Also, The Agency doesn’t seem that bad in the first episode or so; it’s not until you reach Episode 3 or 4 of the ten-episode season* and realize that absolutely nothing has happened yet that it starts dawning that the show is not worth it.
(*Ten episodes? In this economy?!)
But at least the cast will have work for a little longer, even if any second season that emerges (if one does) will be streaming under very different circumstances.
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