Prologue:
An MI6 deputy’s bright future takes a sharp turn after a reunion with a Russian spy forces him to question his entire life.
IMDB: 6.3
Rotten Tomatoes: 69%
Plot:
Adam Lawrence (Charlie Cox) who is a deputy MI6 Agent is suddenly promoted as the Chief of the secret services after Sir Martin Angelis (Ciaran Hinds) is poisoned by ex-Russian agent, Kara Yerzov (Olga Kurylenko) and taken to the hospital.
As Adam is being promoted to the Chief of MI6, things start to unravel as we see the ex-Russian Agent had a past with Adam and was his love interest at one point of time. Apart from that, Kara is the one who helped Adam reach success and heights as an MI6 Agent. Further, we see that even the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) gets involved as they are there to investigate the unnatural rise of Adam Lawrence in MI6, who has become the youngest Chief of MI6 ever to exist.
Review:
Charlie Cox returns to Netflix after 4 years with a wonderful limited series. The last time we saw him was in Daredevil where we saw him as a blind lawyer by day and a vigilante by night. After the success from Daredevil, Charlie Cox has now made his way into Marvel Cinematic Universe with Spider-man: No Way Home and She-Hulk. Charlie Cox has now also become an actor who grabs his previous audience and people too want to see him in his new ventures.
And for the show, Treason is a limited series consisting of 5 episodes having an average duration of 40 minutes. It is not a series that kicks off from the very first episode. Even in 5 episode series, the storyline gradually gets better and keeps on getting interesting after every minute passes by.
The show is beautifully constructed as almost everything about it seems to be done perfectly. The story of the series keeps on getting better as with each episode, the mystery keeps on getting even more difficult to solve. Although there were some aspects where the show could have been better, but for a limited series, the show delivered well enough for a limited series.
Although we hardly get to see the backstory of any character, but the ones who play an essential role in the series had a good backstory explanation. The acting from every actor, whether it was Charlie Cox, Oona Chaplin (who played the wife of Adam Lawrence, Maddy D’Costa), Olga Kurylenko, and Ciaran Hinds was perfect in the series. They all delivered more than they were expected to deliver through their skills.
And a huge appraise for the writers of the show who kept the story for a 5-episode mini-series. Many writers would have attempted to make this story a long show and drag it until no one is watching it, but it was the right intent of show makers and writers to prefer quality over quantity.
As for the ratings, it does not justify the series yet. Maybe it will improve in sometime when the show is watched by more viewers and they start to rate it on the websites.
5 things I liked about Treason:
Treason is one of the really good mini-series from Netflix and as we all know, Netflix has not had good luck with their mini-series in the past. But Treason remains good enough to impress its audience. Here are my picks on the things that I liked about Treason.
- Give Charlie Cox anything and he portrays the character perfectly. Although as a Daredevil fan, it is hard for me to see him not being blind anywhere no matter if I am watching him in a series or watching his interview. So my initial impression of him has been really good. But Charlie Cox carries the reputation he has built for himself perfectly. And as he portrays the role of an MI6 agent, he plays the role to perfection where we see him playing an agent who is under a lot of suspicions and has many people coming after him as his life as an agent keeps on getting more dangerous for himself as the show progresses.
- The ending of the show was really unexpected. I don’t think anyone could have anticipated the death of the series’ main protagonist, Adam killed by Dede was not what I expected. If it would have been Kara or Maddy getting killed by Dede was something I was expecting at that scene in the last episode but not Adam Lawrence.
- The writers keeps the entire story simple and hardly involve anyone else except the characters who were introduced in the first episode. The two bad guys are easy to predict for anyone who has watched spy-thrillers before. That is also one of the weak points of the series as the antagonists are predictable, but for a mini-series with 5 episodes, it was decent enough.
- The way the story slowly unfolds itself about how what happens in the past of Adam, Maddy, Kara, and a few other characters is well executed. The writers give us enough information about the characters that is required at that particular moment. When the story progress and more is discussed about the past, the writers infuse the backstory a bit more to make the viewers understand the story better rather than giving us glimpse and scenes of the past.
- All the main actors involved in the main plot of the series did a really good job. Although we can say that the final two deciding characters did not have much of a role to play in the series, but the rest of the characters involving the kids of Adam and Maddy Lawrence were executed perfectly. No character felt like they were lacking behind in the skills of acting, instead they kept their acting skills really good and carried it throughout the series.
5 things I disliked about Treason:
Treason was not the perfect show. There are many limited series out there on streaming platforms and HBO has made a specialty in them. But Netflix somehow lacks in the arena of limited series, but still, it was a good take to make it a good series.
- There were some plot holes in the series. Adam’s wife, Maddy Lawrence is married to an MI6 agent but even after that she keeps on getting suspicious about her husband’s past life. I guess it’s common sense that any special agent has a lot that goes on in their life and it can not be discussed with anyone in the world even if they are their family members. Even when we get to know that Maddy was a part of the army and has been a good soldier for her country, she still gets manipulated by her friend, Dede Alexander (Tracy Ifeachor). As someone who has been on the lines of serious positions for the country, I expected Maddy to be more smart and intellectual than what she was in the series.
- And discussing another plot hole, when Adam realizes that Kara is involved in the poisoning of Sir Martin Angelis, rather than complaining to Russian Secret Services, he takes the matter into his own hands and lets everything slide to the worst outcomes.
- The cinematography of the series was decent enough, but for a mini-series, Netflix could have allocated a better budget for it. There were some scenes that looked pale and somewhere the darkness in the scenes disturbed the flow of the story progression.
- Writers have made a little bubble of characters that interact with each other. At the end, we see the 2 other members of MI6 play a huge role in the decider finale of the series, but before that, we never saw them interact with anyone else or even have a good enough role. Even Adam never seeks any kind of help from anyone in his agency or outside it. Later, Adam takes the responsibility head-on to fight all the things going wrong in his country and politically as a new person seeks to get in power with the help of insiders in MI6.
- The show was boring and has a hard time keeping the audience’s attention on the screen. As a spy-thriller series, Treason hardly has any good action sequences. Although the mystery keeps on continuing, that too is because of the irresponsibility of Adam Lawrence. Even if there are some action scenes, they hardly last more than 3 minutes and do not impress anyone as the action sequences are too basic.
