Photo courtesy of Netflix
The Bureau
Espionage has been a topic for motion pictures since the advent of movie cameras. Some of the earliest were serials, telling their stories through a succession of cliff-hanging episodes. Hollywood studios have never held a monopoly on spy stories, whether on big screens or small. And with the proliferation of streaming services, it’s become easier than ever to find foreign television gems that might never surface on American local channels, not even PBS.
One interesting recent contender, “The Bureau,” debuted on French television in 2015 and is now streaming on Netflix. “The Bureau” opens in Damascus as a French agent, who calls himself Paul, explains to his Syrian mistress, Nadia, that he’s leaving abruptly for Jordan. His cover story involves teaching at French-language schools across the Near East. Their anguished lovers’ conversation is being watched through grainy surveillance footage by Paul’s home office in Paris. Everything said by Paul, whose real name is Guillaume (and whose code name is Malotru, meaning “Lout”), is a lie.
Paul (and we’ll call him that to keep from confusion) works for the DCSE, the French equivalent of the CIA, with whom they have a cooperative/uncooperative relationship. The DGSE is running deep cover operations in Syria, for the purpose of monitoring the civil war, and Algeria, to keep an eye on its authoritarian regime as well the Islamist militants operating from the country’s hinterlands. But the uncertainty of human beings can throw off the best laid plans. All deceptions aside, Paul is really in love with Nadia, and the DGSE’s top agent in Algeria gets drunk one night and starts babbling.
“The Bureau” slowly builds interest as the characters and their dilemmas grow more understandable and (in many cases) sympathetic—and there are enough characters to fill a Balzac novel. The intrigue comes in triplicate in a shadow world where no one can be trusted, not even the colleague at the next desk, and the shifting designs of geopolitics leave many casualties.
The series, with five seasons behind it and a sixth on the horizon, presents a plausible study of the lives of agents who must be great actors to stay alive, fully in character—multiple characters—at all times. Although cameras and microphones are everywhere, “The Bureau” is a reminder of something the French are apparently good at and their American contemporaries seem to have forgotten: You can listen to every phone call in the world and read every text and email, but nothing can replace men and women on the ground in dangerous places.
To read more "I Hate Hollywood" columns by David Luhrssen, click here.
