The Agency is a 2024 espionage thriller television series for Showtime TV.  The series is produced by actor George Clooney and staring actor Michael Fassbender with Richard Gere. A 2001 series with the same name ran for two seasons and was cancelled as controversial. The explanation for cancellation was it involved an improper exploration of international affairs and ethical conflicts of intelligence work. Due to the media praise of this new series I watched two episodes before deciding it was not worth watching. My experience is that no matter who the actors are, how much is spent creating it or amount of media praise, if the writer ort director has done a  bad job of telling the story, it’s not entertaining to watch.

That’s because there are fundamental rules for creating a great story and this television series, like too many other television series, violates them. In 1990 Joseph Campbell published his book “The Hero’s Journey” which was a followup to his earlier book “The Hero With a Thousand faces.  Campbell’s writings are acknowledged as the encyclopaedia for telling a compelling  narrative as a movie, television story or book. He applied psychological understandings along with a comparative study of literature across time and culture to create what he and many others have described as the “monomyth” for all heroic story narratives. Campbell’s model is divided into seventeen stages, which are further divided into three sections: (1)  Departure (stages 1-5), (2)  Initiation (stages 6-11), and (3) Return (stages 12-17). Following his model offers the creation of a well told and interesting narrative. Not following them commonly results in failure to create a compelling story.

Good stories have the fundamentals of a beginning, a middle and an end. Interesting stories begin with identification of important characters and provide the context of the character’s role. That sets the stage for the rest of the story. Compelling stories move forward with a outline that is both understandable and keeps interest as the story unfolds. Scenes that follow advance the plot through the stages Campbell outlines. But, what do we too often experience? Instead we find the opening episode fails to set the stage. You are left wondering what role this character plays and why. This failure is made worse by not developing the plot in a way that keeps interest. Instead, we have a number very brief segments involving people and events unconnected to the present stage of the story line. arbitrarily injected into the narrative.

No context is offered and the relevance is unexplained. Only later in the episode or even in a following episode is there an explanation for these segments. The viewer is expected to remember them so when the explanation is finally given a connection can be made. Any number of these injections of information are arbitrarily inserted into the plot. On top of that, there are often sudden historical scenes from the past that are inserted in the middle of telling the present story. Too often they are suddenly inserted with no explanation and you are left to figure out if it is a historical fact or a present story line fact.

This kind of writing is seen by writers and directors as inspired, clever, plot presentation when it only results in the viewer being exasperated with having to work at keeping track of past segments, the present plot status and other unexplained aspects. This kind of narrative writing is like dumping a box of jigsaw puzzle pieces on a table and telling the viewer to figure out how to make it a picture puzzle. That’s not outlining a narrative. That’s making a job out of what should be entertainment.

In my opinion this series, The Agency, was guilty of all this kind of poor writing and story telling. I got tired of keeping track of numerous unconnected brief segments and their later explanation. In addition, directors are increasingly using a lot of dark, poorly lit scenes that supposedly enhances the suspense or mystery of what is being shown. Too often, the picture is so dark you can’t make out what is being shown. The darkness becomes a nuisance that interferes with the enjoyment of the  story. This series, The Agency was guilty of darkly lit scenes that were annoying. Lastly, writers and directors seem to think that when there are scenes without dialog they must play “mood music.” But, they select loud annoying music not really relevant to the scene and for far too long. The music becomes an irritant. This new series did that too often and for too long. I responded by turning the music volume off with my remote. It takes away from the enjoyment to have to feel it necessary to turn off the volume while watching a spy thriller or any other program.

That’s my take on too many television shows and especially series I see on television. The writers and directors should abandon their mistaken ideas of being creative and clever. Instead, they should buy Joseph Cambell’s books and study them.