The Safe House - Expositions

The New Zealand Herald

July 29, 2002

New spy babe has a Bond with the past

By Fiona Rae

It's not as if butt-kicking action babes are a new thing. Emma Peel was going hell for leather on the Bad Guys way back in the early 60s, and over her eight-year reign, The Avengers was one of the most popular series of all time.

But it's a brave new world. Television audiences are now so sophisticated that they demand action, irony, pathos, bathos, jokes and bucketfuls of emotion from award-winning actors - all in a commercial hour.

Back in the 60s, we were happy enough for the Goodies to get the Baddies. These days, action babes have to have deeply complicated personal lives, secret grievances and tragic pasts - in other words, reasons to do what they do.

But it turns out that secret agent girl Sydney Bristow is a a pastiche of all the leather-clad, high-kickin', wily babes who have come before.

And so Alias is like one continual flashback.

Sydney (Jennifer Garner) is a college student who's also an agent for the top secret agency SD-6.

She learned, in a convoluted story about dying her hair red and breaking into an embassy in China, that SD-6 aren't really the Good Guys.

After telling her fiance about her secret job, the nasty men at SD-6 did away with him for being a security risk, giving Syd added motivation for getting back at them. She went to the real Good Guys, the CIA, and became a double agent.

Then there's Syd's estranged dad (Victor Garber), who was involved in the killing of the fiance and is a double agent too.

The death of Syd's mother has had an impact on Syd as well. Got it?

Well, never mind if you didn't. There were plenty of close calls, high kicks, explosions and even Syd being tortured by a nasty Chinese guy (injected her with something, pulled a tooth and still she had time to tell jokes).

All the action stuff is ludicrously implausible (later in the series Syd effortlessly breaks into the Vatican) and therefore lots of fun. Singlehandedly break into an embassy, overcome 20 armed guards, then turn the tables on your torturer? Yeah, right.

There's shades of Emma Peel, Charlie's Angels and James Bond. And with the addition of a virtually autistic tech guy who hides cameras in lipstick and lock-picks in her high heels, the pastiche is complete.

This is award-winning stuff, folks. The show has 11 Emmy nominations this year, including Garner for lead actress and one for the writer of last week's pilot.

That such a new fantasy-action show could garner so many accolades has had the critics in the US wondering why Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from whom Garner has borrowed a few moves, is snubbed by the Emmys year after year.

Garner does hold the screen. She has that fluid ability to change the way she looks, and I don't mean just the red wig. From fresh-faced college girl to screamingly angry agent, she has presence.

Alias is also a product of the times. Post-September 11, spies are big on screen. 24 was the most successful new show on US television last season, and a new show called She Spies - a kind of Charlie's Angels-meets-Austin Powers - is also in production.

It's the same in Britain, where the slick, Armani-suited series Spooks was a hit and caused a surge of applications for MI5.

* Alias, TV3, 8.30pm

Thanks to JenniferGarner!