The show starts off slowly but promising and I expected to be in for quite a ride, but in the end it never truly delivers. Its focus seems to be set mostly on character drama, where the espionage theme just serves mostly a secondary role and the sci-fi aspect is ultimately underused.
I had hoped for a really clever and intelligent story that would develop over the course of the season, but after watching all the episodes, I have to say that it's simply not there.
At best, the only motivation for anything that happens seems to be "we don't like them". But other than one incident, which isn't even explained but merely mentioned a couple of times (which is silly in itself given how huge it actually is), there's no apparent motivation whatesoever as to why one side wouldn't like the other side. As a viewer, you're just seeing stuff happen because it happens. Cold-war because cold-war.
There's a good amount of decent action and on average at least 1 person gets killed per episode as part of what appears to be a plan. However, again as a viewer, you're just seeing a random person you hardly know or don't know at all (and as such don't care about) get killed, because of reasons which aren't explained. Some of it is "explained" in the last two episodes, but even then the drive behind it just lacks reasonable motivation.
Between the action and the main story, there's a lot of character drama and a good chunk of that is on the level of soap opera. Not all of it serves a real purpose and sometimes it just drags on a bit too much.
During the last 4 or so episodes, things start to happen so conveniently so often, I found it hard to suspend my disbelief. Very lazy writing, looks like they were in a hurry to wrap it up. Certain aspects of the show are also made mysterious for the sole reason of appearing mysterious. There's no substance there. Again, lazy.
Acting overall is top notch and J.K. Simmons delivers a great performance as both Howards, especially in the first half of the season, where he portrays the diffences in personality and character so well, you don't even need another clue as to who you're looking at; you could notice just by his walk, for instance. This subtleness sadly mostly fades during the last couple of episodes, and not just because of what's happening story-wise.
I also liked Harry Lloyd's portrayal of Peter Quayle.
The general atmosphere and the setting in Berlin is great.
All in all, it's not a bad show, but it's also never more than an average show, despite obvious potential for being way more than that. 6,5/10, rounding up to a 7.
I had hoped for a really clever and intelligent story that would develop over the course of the season, but after watching all the episodes, I have to say that it's simply not there.
At best, the only motivation for anything that happens seems to be "we don't like them". But other than one incident, which isn't even explained but merely mentioned a couple of times (which is silly in itself given how huge it actually is), there's no apparent motivation whatesoever as to why one side wouldn't like the other side. As a viewer, you're just seeing stuff happen because it happens. Cold-war because cold-war.
There's a good amount of decent action and on average at least 1 person gets killed per episode as part of what appears to be a plan. However, again as a viewer, you're just seeing a random person you hardly know or don't know at all (and as such don't care about) get killed, because of reasons which aren't explained. Some of it is "explained" in the last two episodes, but even then the drive behind it just lacks reasonable motivation.
Between the action and the main story, there's a lot of character drama and a good chunk of that is on the level of soap opera. Not all of it serves a real purpose and sometimes it just drags on a bit too much.
During the last 4 or so episodes, things start to happen so conveniently so often, I found it hard to suspend my disbelief. Very lazy writing, looks like they were in a hurry to wrap it up. Certain aspects of the show are also made mysterious for the sole reason of appearing mysterious. There's no substance there. Again, lazy.
Acting overall is top notch and J.K. Simmons delivers a great performance as both Howards, especially in the first half of the season, where he portrays the diffences in personality and character so well, you don't even need another clue as to who you're looking at; you could notice just by his walk, for instance. This subtleness sadly mostly fades during the last couple of episodes, and not just because of what's happening story-wise.
I also liked Harry Lloyd's portrayal of Peter Quayle.
The general atmosphere and the setting in Berlin is great.
All in all, it's not a bad show, but it's also never more than an average show, despite obvious potential for being way more than that. 6,5/10, rounding up to a 7.