2 min read

Richard Gere, left, and Michael Fassbender in a scene from “The Agency.” IMDb photo

Here is Michael Fassbender. You remember him from … no, you don’t.

I checked the credits: Mr. Fassbender got an Oscar nomination for for 2013’s “12 Years a Slave.” You may have watched his work as the plantation owner Edwin Epps in that film. I even liked that. Then he was nominated again in the title role of “Steve Jobs” 2016, this time for .

I think you don’t remember him because of that long, boring last name (remember when actors had the last names Hunter or Hudson? It made remembering them so easy).

Or maybe because he’s not on your television a lot, or maybe it’s because he’s so boring?

Here’s your chance to pick up on Mr. Fassbender with “The Agency,” which has a truly, very slow first episode, with most of the hour showing poor Michael, playing an obviously much-hailed agency hero, returning to London from Ethiopia of all places, where nothing ever happens, getting in and out of government planes, buses, cars and sealed-up vans. So we didn’t seen much of the city. It could have been Little Rock, Arkansas.

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Then there is the rest of the hour in which we tour, with Michael, a posh super apartment the Agency gave him to live in. He goes from room to room, peeking under all the shelves and beds for mikes. (He finds two, don’t give that away, they were the most exciting moments.)

The best part of the series opener is the back-up cast that includes the great and mostly unheralded Jeffery Wright, Katherine Waterston (daughter of the super Sam Waterston), and the once superstar Richard Gere, who gets to wear his own gray hair.

I love Richard, he can be boring, but we all remember him from the wonderful “Pretty Woman” 1990.

And then we meet the lovely Violet Verigo. We don’t know her but we love the name.

I will tell you this, the initial hour is full of cliffhangers that promise some more exciting action. And no matter how boring Mr. Fassbender is, we will always have Richard Gere and Violet Verigo.

“The Agency” streams on Paramount+.

J.P. Devine of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.

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