UK TV review: Citadel Season 1
Review Overview
Cast
7Consistency
5Action
7David Farnor | On 29, May 2023
As the streaming industry continues to evolve, shrink, grow and pivot to meet the wider shifting landscape of modern entertainment, it’s inevitable that each of the key players should be looking to build their own signature franchises. And so we arrive at Amazon’s Citadel, its most brazen effort yet to create a screen universe – not from a book or pre-existing material but entirely from scratch. Starting put with a plan to create global spin-offs in a range of languages and countries, it’s a spy thriller that, perhaps aptly, feels like it’s only just getting started.
The series follows Mason Kane (Richard Madden) and Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), two agents of Citadel, a worldwide network of spies that has no government affiliations but, we are assured, are the good guys. We first meet them on a high-speed train ride through the Alps that, inevitably, turns into a high-speed explosive set-piece through the Alps. From that opening sequence, two things are immediately made clear: first, Citadel is being taken down by a rival network of spies (the bad guys) called Manticore; and second, that the series will do whatever it takes to shoehorn in as much action as possible, to the point of almost queasy intensity.
Things improve as we’re introduced to Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci), the brains behind the whole operation, who informs Mason that his memory has been wiped of all knowledge of Citadel but that he’s their star operative – and is needed to save the day. The more time we spend with Bernard, the better the show gets, as Tucci’s inimitable brand of laconic smarts makes even the most implausible plot twist sound plausible – and the series, which is led by showrunner David Weil after some creative shake-ups behind the scenes, has a lot of implausible plot twists.
They mostly involve Nadia, who we learn has similarly had her memory wiped, and the question of who they can trust and whether, indeed, they can trust each other. Richard Madden’s excellent at bringing confused depth to a superficially bland character and Priyanka Chopra Jonas kicks butt with an on-screen authority that’s more than persuasive. If they don’t always get the dialogue to sell their past romantic entanglements, they do get some added complications as the show unfolds its narrative puzzle box that means they land in an enjoyably complex place come the finale.
The real star pairing, though, is perhaps Tucci and his Manticore counterpart Dahlia Archer, played with arch relish by Leslie Manville. That they get their showdown earlier than you expect is testament to how uneven some of Citadel’s storytelling is, but the two thesps more than sell their conflicting ideologies with personal motivations, and ground the story’s more absurd flourishes.
Along the way, the directing team conjures up some genuinely memorable set pieces – from an office heist and restaurant fight to a submarine parachute landing – but it’s only after six episodes that things feel coherent enough for the action to carry a meaningful punch. The result is an intriguing set-up for Season 2 – and the international cousins that are already on the way – it’s just a shame they didn’t get to that point within the first few episodes. With runtimes that clock in as short as 30-something minutes, Citadel clearly knows when it needs to accelerate; you just might end up wishing the show had accelerated through its first season to when the really meaty spy hijinks are about to begin.