Alexander Hale is a first-generation Chinese American who takes his allegiance to the US seriously. As a Marine he’s part of an assault team in Belarus. The mission goes sideways and, bringing up the rear, he’s faced with an impossible choice. The oversight in his ear (if that’s not an ironic metaphor) tells him that there’s only room for him and one more hostage on the rescue chopper and he has to give priority to American hostages. Unfortunately, he comes across both a young local child and an American woman and the choice he makes impacts his career trajectory. Several years later he’s a valued analyst but no longer going out on missions. He wants a promotion to the higher echelons, but it doesn’t seem to be forthcoming. On top of that, he’s been getting anxiety attacks and migraines headaches which don’t make his life any easier.
What he doesn’t realise yet is that he’s somehow been hacked. For some nefarious reason, an unseen agitator can see and hear almost everything he does. Those headaches? That’s actually the outgoing signal being turned on and off. But he’s suddenly promoted and given the task of helping to find a possible mole. When going through a cache of mission files, Alexander starts to put two-and-two together and realises the unlikely truth, that he might well be the mole everyone’s looking for. What should he do? Does he inform his superiors and be at risk of being terminated (perhaps literally) or try to find out what is going on himself?
Who can he trust when he can’t even trust himself?
*spoilers*
With its mixture of subtext and terrorism and a patriotic central figure finding trouble from all-sides, Peacock‘s The Copenhagen Test will most likely (and quite reasonably) be compared to the likes of 24 (or the more recent, one season Paramount+ show Rabbit Hole which also featured Kiefer Sutherland) and certainly fills that niche. Though full of the shiniest, sleekest tech, this is a premise that could have been brought to the screen decades ago (and one can point to similar variations along the way) but 21st Century VFX and hi-resolution cinematography and post-production (not to mention current feelings of distrust, accountability and paranoia) amp up the tension. You aren’t here for the originality of it all: it’s more a case of old-fashioned dramas of distrust, cloaked in bespoke modern tech… or, more bluntly, to discover who’s doing what to whom and why. It asks you: if in a similar predicament, how would you deal with it and try to circumvent it? The series offers some imaginative options, though its strengths are deciding whom to trust. At eight episodes there’s an argument it could have been even tighter at six chapters, but it all pushes along nicely, giving you enough time to ponder but not too much to think about the cracks.
Simu Liu is probably most recognised for his title role in Marvel‘s 2001 release Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, a character he will reprise in the much-anticipated upcoming Avengers movies – still almost a year away despite the slow trickle of weekly teaser trailers. Here, devoid of actual ancient eastern magic, Liu still demonstrates his prowess in impressive hand-to-hand sequences that never look explicitly pre-choreographed or too glossy and balletic. Perhaps not as bone-crunchingly overt as, say, the opening episodes of the (then) Netflix‘s Daredevil or a Saturday night out in Glasgow, the combat sequences are kept speedy and as organic as a spy thriller of this kind will ever get. It’s clear that Liu is more than up to that physical challenge and though those encounters are frequent, they’re never there to prop up inadequacies elsewhere.
Mexican actor Melissa Barrera (whom you may well have seen in several Scream movies and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical In the Heights) is the bartender to whom Alexander pours out highly edited versions of his predicament and it’s really spoiling nothing to reveal that it’s quickly established she’s another operative hired for the exact purpose of keeping an eye on him. Barrera is equally good in what turns out to be a shifting set of allegiances – her character is pragmatic to a fault – able to flirt, joke, set you at your ease and coldly accept a kill-order on you in quick succession. Yet despite the viewer’s own suspicions, she quickly becomes a character you want to like even if she might yet be a real threat. She has the exotic, come-hither looks and balancing snark of a Morena Baccarin (Firefly/Homeland) or Isabella Merced (The Last of Us, Alien: Romulus) and the moves of an Alias-era Jennifer Garner with a touch more brutality. Rumour has it that she’s a contender for the reimagined Wonder Woman which would absolutely fine.
The supporting cast are also impressive. Brian d’Arcy James is the ultra-pragmatic Peter Moira, to whom all operatives report and who has little time for failure; Sinclair Daniel is a rookie, but very instinctive analyst trying to assess Alex’s motivations; Veteran Saul Rubinek is Victor Simonek, the ex-operative turned masterchef and a family friend from which Alexander seeks sage advice. Kathleen Chalfant essays the role of ‘St. George’ the creator of The Orphanage, and whose own past plays a factor in the chaos that’s now starting to envelop the agency.
The basic building blocks add up to solid spy-fi, but are delivered with characters you get invested in, rather than them being mere interchangeable action figures. The idea of an agency with an enigmatic nom-de-plume is hardly a new one and requires a requisite suspension of disbelief. In 24 it was the ‘CTU’ acronym, in La Femme Nikita it was ‘Section One‘ and here it’s ‘The Orphanage‘ none of which have a title that should really compel any sane person to expect a long-life span or want to join them. The Orphanage exists as oversight over all the other alphabet agencies and if its history and creation are duly a factor in the developing story, there’s still enough gaps to neatly gloss over the way its mere existence would be tolerated by the likes of the NSA, the CIA, the FBI never mind international organisations. Its decades of operations might not be flawless, but it’s supposedly never had a successful breach of security and if anything awkward did happen, it was neatly and quietly contained with extreme prejudice. It’s the kind of the literal ‘upstairs’ (complete with staff having ornate, exclusive ye olde keys for no real reason) to the standard operations ‘downstairs’ that’s only found so obviously in tv drama, but you go with the flow of the basic set-up.
The conceit of a person having their sight and hearing hacked is both a great idea on which to hang a plot and bizarre enough to play with to crank up tension. As a viewer it keeps you on your toes, but you will likely find several moments where you’ll wonder if some of the narrative rules are truly consistent. For every in-story solution that’s genuinely clever, there’s a few that don’t make a lot of sense or rely solely on good fortune rather than planning. The first half of the run is clever and subversive, in the sense that it’s hard to predict what characters motivations are and what they’ll do next.
(The Copenhagen Test of the title is not a real-life quandary but is the sort of exercise that evaluates tough decision-making in the field that Alex has to make in Belarus and on a bigger scale on his latest venture). On that note, the idea that a top-level operative like Melissa Barrera’s ‘Michelle’ is seemingly used so frequently on missions that she is inconveniently recognised/not recognised according to plot needs seems questionable and problematic both on an operational level and a story beat…
There’s some unreliable narration along the way or presumptions that are nicely and effectively undermined. The second half is more about the consequences of that, more traditional espionage derring-do and dangerous agendas, but still delivered well enough to keep you entertained.
No specific spoilers, but amongst all the answers we eventually get, there are some contradictions that still seem iffy and there is one revelation at the very end that feels like a layer too far in what is otherwise a fun and satisfying story in which you can’t quite be sure of loyalties and consequences. The Copenhagen Test is neither brainless guff nor too darkly realistic but occupies the middle-ground of guilty-pleasure and entertaining espionage. On that level, I don’t think it’s saying too much to suggest that while this is technically a self-contained mini-series, it also feels like a potential springboard to a tv franchise that could give Jack Bauer a run for his money…
- Story8
- Acting8
- Direction8
- Production Design / VFX9
