I finished watching The Night Agent last night and my review of the Netflix show is complicated. Not so much the show, as my review.

The setup:

Low-level FBI agent Peter Sutherland works in the basement of the White House, manning a phone that never rings – until the night it does, propelling him into a conspiracy that leads all the way to the Oval Office.

Part of this show, I’d give a 7 or 8 out of ten. Part of it, I’d give a 1 or a 2. The action is good, the plot is serviceable if a bit predictable, and I enjoyed the actors, including the two antagonists: Peter Sutherland played by Gabriel Basso and Rose Larkin played by Luciane Buchanan. Good enough for a higher rating, but…

The issues were the plot holes and flaws. This is a spoiler-free review, but for example, a couple tours a vacant house for sale, watches and gets the key code for the alarm from the realtor, then comes back that night and moves in, turning off the alarm. In any house as valuable as the one in question, when the alarm is turned off, the owner of the house gets a text announcing the fact.

And this kind of thing happens, over and over and over. I often found myself laughing out loud at things that would never happen in the real world. It makes me think there were obviously multiple writers on the team, and some were not as good as others. And there’s where the lower rating comes in.

If you can suspend your belief at the occasional absurdities, then you will likely enjoy the ten episodes. If the highly improbable life things drive you nuts, then you will hate it.

I liked it enough to give a second season a try, but things will have to improve in the writing for me to hang out for a full ten more episodes.