Streaming on: Prime Video
Episodes viewed: 3 of 6
The Russo brothers have been making Bond films in one form or another for the better part of a decade now. They brought old-school espionage to the MCU in The Winter Soldier, turned Chris Hemsworth into a (nearly) unstoppable force in Extraction, and played spy games with Ryan Gosling in The Gray Man. Given they wear their Q Branch decoder rings with such obvious pride, it’s little wonder Amazon came to them with this monstrously expensive, multi-series Bond-homage. But while MI6's finest is keenly felt throughout this flagship US series (satellite shows set in India, Mexico, Spain and Italy are in production), Citadel’s Bond inspiration is categorically Roger Moore over Daniel Craig.
The show begins, as all spy yarns should, with a mission in progress. We’re introduced to Richard Madden’s square-jawed super-spy Mason Kane (a dependably heroic moniker, but no Tyler Rake) on a train through the Alps, enjoying light flirtation with workplace rival Nadia Sinh (a devilishly good Priyanka Chopra Jonas, clearly living her best life) while in pursuit of a nuclear briefcase. Five minutes and one bathroom brawl later, not only is Citadel burned, but the Backstop has been initiated, erasing Kane and Sinh’s memories while leaving them for dead in the kind of enhanced redundancy package you might expect from Sports Direct.
Bombastic action is doled out at regular intervals and the leads’ electrifying sexual tension could power a small city for weeks.
Overtly playful, Citadel is quick to demonstrate that witty bons mots and unflappable cool take priority over functional spycraft here. International spy agency Citadel (Espionnes Sans Frontières?) is at odds with Manticore (not an acronym, just a scary name), a diabolical cabal of the world’s super-rich. And while the frenetic action pulls no punches (or knees, or knives, or sharp bits of glass), it’s clear from the off that Citadel’s world belongs more to G.I. Joe than Jason Bourne.
Richard Madden, having flexed his muscles in Bodyguard, feels oddly cast as Citadel’s amnesiac spy: a grim-faced straight-man in a goofy action romp where shoes transform on command (“Activate ski boots!”) and agents’ personalities are backed up to iCloud. If the tone is uneven, it’s likely linked to the departure of original writers Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec, who bailed in 2021, leaving the Russos to draft David Weil as replacement showrunner and prompting extensive reshoots that reportedly gobbled much of the show’s whopping $300 million budget.
But if you can get past all that and embrace a daft conspiracy caper in which Lesley Manville plots global domination while diligently pruning her roses (“They’re needy little wankers”) and Stanley Tucci carries memories around in a syringe, Citadel is surprisingly fun. Bombastic action is doled out at regular intervals and the leads’ electrifying sexual tension — all but undressing each other with every thirsty glance — could power a small city for weeks. It’s difficult to care overly about the geo-political twaddle (quite what the localised spin-off shows will contribute to Citadel’s ‘mythology’ is anyone’s guess), but standing as it does at a daffy halfway point between late-season Alias and the camp end of the Bond spectrum, there’s some gigglesome enjoyment to be had.