Treason

Treason stars Charlie Cox as Adam Lawrence, an MI6 operative who receives an unexpected promotion when head of intelligence Sir Martin Angelis (Ciarán Hinds) is incapacitated in a poisoning. Lawrence takes to his new position with confidence, but Kara (Olga Kurylenko), an old flame with whom he shares a rocky past, uses this moment to re-enter his life. This unexpected appearance causes tension at work and at home, where his wife, Maddy (Oona Chaplin), suspects her husband of keeping secrets beyond the remit of his job. When Lawrence’s professional and domestic lives suddenly clash, he is forced to confront everything he thought he knew about himself and his loved ones.

Treason has high ambitions for its storytelling, but it’s let down somewhat by uninspiring writing. It’s quite exposition-heavy, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for a complex spy thriller, but a lot of the exposition leans towards the repetitive, taking up time that could have been spent adding more intrigue or developing characters in the service of telling its audience things they’ve already been told. This has the effect of making the action feel unusually sluggish, which is particularly unfortunate for a series trying to be a tense thriller.

There are glimmers of a compelling mystery and some fun spy action, and the creative team clearly has a passion for both the genre and the history of espionage, but Treason’s pacing makes these elements feel almost superfluous and halfbaked, leaving little for keen viewers to really sink their teeth into beyond very straightforward character dynamics.

The characters feel somewhat flat too, despite the best efforts of the show’s talented cast to bring some personality to their roles. Leading man Lawrence doesn’t have much in the way of distinguishing characteristics, which doesn’t give his supporting cast a whole lot to support, and makes what should be tense and compelling character interactions feel generic and uninteresting.

Overall, Treason is a perfectly adequate espionage show that doesn’t do anything surprising or impressive, which is an awkward situation for a spy thriller to be in. There’s room for Treason to turn itself around, but it doesn’t make a particularly strong first impression, and beyond the star power of its cast there isn’t a lot on display to hold its audience’s attention.

Umar Ali

Treason is available on Netflix on 26th December 2022.

Watch the trailer for Treason here: