Treason, Netflix review — the spy who should have stayed out in the cold

Presented with a never-ending stream of new series coming out on myriad platforms, viewers may want to establish a more ruthless vetting process. For instance, shows with complacent titles such as this year’s Suspect and Suspicion don’t tend to boast much creativity, while synopses promising events that “change everything” frequently don’t offer much of anything.

A new Netflix spy thriller, Treason, is no exception on either front. Released on Boxing Day, the five-parter rather aptly feels like the reheated leftovers of other espionage adventures. This is the kind of show in which trite, earnestly delivered lines such as “Do not trust anyone” abound.

The series follows Adam Lawrence (Charlie Cox), a shining light of MI6 who becomes the youngest ever agency chief after his boss (Ciarán Hinds) is poisoned at his London gentleman’s club — presumably the security were too busy keeping the riff-raff out to notice an assassin wandering in off the street.

She is Kara (Olga Kurylenko), a Russian femme fatale who is, incidentally, Adam’s former ally and lover. Having engineered his rise to the top job, she now intends to use him to acquire classified MI6 files about a past mission which haunts her. And while his old flame is making Adam sweat, his wife Maddy (Oona Chaplin) has started keeping tabs on her suddenly skittish husband.

Simmering in the background for now is a political subplot about both foreign and domestic interference in elections. But every potentially suspenseful development — including the kidnapping of Adam’s daughter — is undermined by slack characterisations and exchanges which spell out, but fail to convey, the high stakes involved.

What’s frustrating is that series creator Matt Charman doesn’t come to the world of espionage from the cold. In 2016 he was nominated for an Oscar alongside the Coen Brothers for their screenplay for Bridge of Spies. How Treason could do with some of that Coen magic.

★★☆☆☆

On Netflix from December 26