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The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
September 18, 2001
NEW SPY SHOWS ARRIVE WITH A STRANGE TIMELINESS
by Charlie McCollum
It is a case of television art inadvertently imitating reality.
This TV season, the spy genre -- secret agents working in the shadows
at times of world crisis -- is being reborn for the first time since
the 1960s, when clones and spoofs of James Bond littered the airwaves.
Since Watergate, secretive government agencies -- the FBI, the CIA, the
National Security Agency -- have most often been the bad guys, rogue
operatives conspiring to keep Scully and Mulder from the truth.
But the fall 2001 season includes three series set, at least partly,
within the CIA: CBS¬ "The Agency," ABC's "Alias," and Fox's highly
anticipated and heavily promoted "24. " All involve, in one way or
another, heroic government agents battling terrorists bent on world
chaos. Two other shows -- NBC's "UC: Undercover" and ABC's "Thieves" --
involve undercover operatives of somewhat ambiguous moral character,
fighting the good fight against evil.
Now, after the worst terrorist attack in the history of the United
States, all these series will make their debuts as the American
government -- including all the real life agents that it can deploy --
is being directed toward the manhunt for killers.
The horror of last Tuesday's attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon has put the producers of the CIA shows, in particular, and the
networks involved in a position of having to reevaluate what they are
about to put on the air.
The opening episode of "The Agency" -- which involves the CIA's
attempts to thwart a terrorist bombing and includes direct references
to Osama bin Laden -- has been postponed and will be replaced by a less
ripped-from-the-headlines segment. Fox is discussing whether to make
changes to "24," which begins with the manhunt of a terrorist assassin
and includes the bombing a Los Angeles-bound jetliner.
"The world's a very different place today than it was," says "Agency"
producer Shaun Cassidy. "We will have to make some adjustments. " But
even before the terrorist attacks, those working on the CIA shows had
been stressing that they were doing entertainment and not, as "Alias"
creator J.J. Abrams put it, "a documentary on Langley," the home of the
agency.
"We're not a procedural show," says "24" producer Joel Surnow. "Our
drama comes from another place. We're trying to augment realism and
make it a little sexier and more visual. For instance, TV actors are
usually better looking than the people doing those jobs in real life. "
"With all deference to the CIA, which I respect enormously, it's less
interesting to me than the story I'm trying to tell," says Abrams,
whose "Alias" has been described as "Felicity" meets "La Femme Nikita.
" "I wasn't drawn to doing a spy show," adds Abrams, who in fact
created "Felicity. " "I was drawn to a story about a strong-willed
woman who is in this incredibly tenuous position. I'm much more
interested in writing what works than what happens to be real. " "The
Agency" is being made with cooperation from the agency and uses former
agents as consultants. Chase Brandon, a former CIA field operative and
its first liaison to Hollywood, recently told the New York Times that
the agency was cooperating with the series because "to see our image
changing for the outside world makes us feel better about ourselves
internally.
"It's a good morale booster. " While the producers of "The Agency"
stress the realism of their show, even they temper their remarks by
suggesting they are more interested in character than in re-creating
actual CIA cases.
Adds Cassidy: "The dramatic juice of the show...really is about the
moral and ethical struggles that each of these characters undergoes in
the course of this job. National security and how far you go in the
name of national security is subjective with each of these characters.
" In fact, all these shows only brush reality. They certainly don't
embrace it.
"Alias," which has one of the best opening episodes in recent
television history, is more of a cartoon than a real-life drama. The
lead character is a graduate student who just happens to be a CIA
operative when not cracking the books.
"24" is more of a straightforward spy thriller -- albeit with marginal
connections to reality -- although it has a very innovative format in
which each of the 24 episodes represents one hour in the chase to hunt
down the assassin. It's the real-time elements of the series and its
creative use of split screen and the jittery camera work more common to
reality TV that have made it a critics¬ favorite even before it airs.
Even "The Agency," for all its CIA consultants, often bears a very
loose resemblance to reality -- especially in its sluggish pilot where
some of the breaks agents get in trying to stop the terrorists are
nothing short of miraculous.
© North Jersey Media Group, Inc. 2001
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