Tag: Ideal

By Miles SurreyJan. 23, 1:26 pm UTC • 5 min

The Netflix of 2025 is a much different beast from the Netflix of a decade ago. In its early days as a streamer, Netflix took big swings with its original programming, headlined by spending $100 million to make the first two seasons of House of Cards, sight unseen. Flagship shows from that era like Orange Is the New Black, The Crown, and Narcos checked similar boxes: bold, lavish prestige television that wouldn’t feel out of place on HBO or FX. In a sense, Netflix was ahead of the curve, anticipating that studios would eventually balk at licensing their shows in favor of launching rival streamers. Soon, Netflix wasn’t just an industry upstart: It was fundamentally changing Hollywood. 

As Netflix has expanded, however, the company’s priorities have shifted. The days when a drama such as (respectfully) Bloodline can get three seasons are a thing of the past. Now, Netflix originals have a much shorter leash when it comes to renewal: Time and again, promising projects aren’t given enough time to find an audience. The streamer also has its fingers in many different pies: reality TV, live sports, docuseries, international productions, and so on. As a result, Netflix isn’t just content with being the new HBO: It wants to be streaming’s answer to cable, a one-stop shop for all your entertainment needs. 

Netflix’s mindset for its original series has also evolved. As Netflix executive Jinny Howe put it, the streamer’s ideal show these days is a “gourmet cheeseburger” that can be “premium and commercial at the same time.” That description certainly doesn’t apply to, say, Mindhunter, a prestige drama that was beloved by David Fincher obsessives but managed to eke out only two seasons. (As always, justice for Mindhunter.) Howe pointed to Bridgerton as an example of a gourmet cheeseburger show done right. I can’t argue with that, but for another example of a delectable gourmet cheeseburger—this time with a Dad TV sensibility—I’d like to nominate The Night Agent. 

Based on the Matthew Quirk novel of the same name, The Night Agent’s first season follows Peter Sutherland (played by Gabriel Basso), an FBI agent who saves countless passengers from a subway bombing in Washington, D.C. After Peter himself is questioned for the attack—partially on account of his late father being a suspected traitor—he’s assigned to a seemingly dead-end job answering the phone for Night Action, an off-the-books government program with agents working undercover around the globe. One night, Peter gets a call from Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan), a cybersecurity CEO who has just escaped a pair of assassins who murdered her aunt and uncle. Peter guides Rose to safety before discovering that her relatives secretly worked as Night Agents themselves, and whatever they were investigating could be connected to the D.C. Metro bombing. As Peter safeguards Rose from a conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of the White House, he soon finds himself in a race against time to prevent more attacks on American soil. (Spoiler alert: Peter does, in fact, save the day.) 

In terms of plot and execution, The Night Agent didn’t bring anything new to the table, but that’s a feature of the series, not a bug. If you’re a fan of ’90s action-thrillers (In the Line of Fire, Air Force One, The Fugitive) or the Bourne franchise, The Night Agent scratches a similar itch, combining exciting action set pieces with twists that, if sometimes predictable, aren’t ridiculous enough to insult the audience’s intelligence. (Basso, meanwhile, doesn’t have the charisma of someone like Matt Damon, but he’s a serviceable action hero worth rooting for.) If Netflix is making a serious bid to replace cable for the next generation, then The Night Agent is the streamer’s answer to 24: a taut thriller that splits the difference between a trashy airport novel and more sophisticated genre fare. 

In other words, The Night Agent has all the ingredients of a gourmet cheeseburger. Netflix subscribers, in turn, ate The Night Agent up, as it became the most viewed series on the platform in the first half of 2023. Now, The Night Agent is back for its second season, attempting to find similar success. (The show has also scored an early Season 3 renewal.) This time around, Peter has been promoted from a desk job to a position as an agent in the field, working undercover in Bangkok alongside his new mentor, Alice (Brittany Snow).

The new season puts us right in the middle of the action, with Peter and Alice surveilling a subject who may be linked to a leak within the CIA. When the duo splits up after encountering another person of interest, however, armed assailants arrive on their tail, leaving Peter and Alice to tear through the streets of Bangkok to reach an extraction point. Except—gasp—the bad guys know exactly where they’re headed; one thing leads to another, and Alice is gunned down before Peter narrowly escapes. There’s only one way this could’ve happened, and you might want to brace yourself for this revelation: Night Action has also been compromised, leaving Peter with no one he can trust—again—other than his old pal Rose, who now works at a tech startup.  

The formula is familiar from The Night Agent’s first season: dynamic action scenes, a government conspiracy, flashbacks that recontextualize a character’s motivations, the threat of domestic terrorism, Peter and Rose making out during some downtime. In fact, where the show’s second season disappoints is its meager attempts at trying something new. Bangkok is an intriguing setting for The Night Agent, hinting at a future where Peter’s heroic exploits occur on a global scale. But with the exception of the dynamite opening sequence, Bangkok is barely featured in the series. (Once Peter escapes, he spends most of the season in New York.) To paraphrase Kevin Garnett as Kevin Garnett in Uncut Gems, why the fuck would you show me Bangkok if I couldn’t stay there then?! (The White Lotus Season 3 can’t come soon enough.) 

That’s more of a highbrow critique, to be fair, and The Night Agent isn’t a highbrow show. This is quintessential Dad TV: a meat-and-potatoes thriller that sets out to do everything you’d expect it to and doesn’t push boundaries. If it had fewer F-bombs, you could envision The Night Agent airing on a broadcast network during the aughts. Of course, these qualities also make the series a far cry from some of the ambitious swings Netflix originally championed. In that respect, The Night Agent is the platonic ideal of what a modern Netflix show should strive to be: accessible, middlebrow popcorn entertainment. Perhaps that sounds like a backhanded compliment—not only about The Night Agent, but also about Netflix’s broader mandate to make more gourmet cheeseburgers. But is it really such a bad thing when I’m already eager to binge Season 3? 

Miles Surrey

Miles writes about television, film, and whatever your dad is interested in. He is based in Brooklyn.