stevenpiziks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stevenpiziks) wrote2025-12-30 06:55 pm
stevenpiziks) wrote2025-12-30 06:55 pm
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The Copenhagen Test: A Review
I've been watching The Copenhagen Test lately, and I'm halfway through the third episode. (The full season dropped on Peacock a few days ago.)
I'm watching it partly because Simu Liu is in it. You know, the guy from Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings? I like him, and he needs to be in more stuff!
And I'm watching it partly because Brian d'Arcy James is in it. Brian and I were friends back in high school and early college when we both were doing amateur theater and did a few shows together. I went into teaching, and Brian went to Broadway--and Hollywood. For non-theater folks, the shows you might have heard about are the musical SHREK (he originated the title character), SOMETHING ROTTEN (he originated Nick Bottom), and HAMILTON (he originated King George), though the role I remember him most for was reporter Matt Carroll in SPOTLIGHT, the movie about the reporters who broke the story about child molestation in the Catholic church.
Anyway, Alexander (Liu), is a spy who, it turns out, has been unwittingly loaded up with technology that broadcasts everything he sees and hears to an unknown adversary. Brian plays Peter Moira, a nattily-dressed fatherly figure who is second in command of the division where Alexander works. The two of them have to figure out how to trust each other while also figuring out who the adversary is. Pete has the nagging feeling that Alexander is in on the sensors in his brain, while Alexander wonders if he should vanish before Pete has him quietly killed. Trust is a major over-arcing theme in the show.
I'm liking the show quite a lot. There are layers to the storytelling, when the story backs up and shows us the same set of events from an entirely different perspective that changes everything we know. I always enjoy that kind of thing.
Another plus is that the writers got rid of that stupid, tired spy trope in which the spy is not only fighting bad guys, but is also fighting his own dysfunctional agency (because of bureaucracy, a mole, political pressure, or that the spy has been forced to go rogue and now everyone wants his head). Instead, we have an agency that WANTS the spy to succeed and WANTS to protect its own people. The administration, as embodied by Pete, is actually supportive of the spy and does its best to help him. Goodness, who knew that could happen? It's refreshing and it lets us viewers concentrate instead on the complex plotting--another thing I like.
It's way worth your time to catch the show.
I'm watching it partly because Simu Liu is in it. You know, the guy from Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings? I like him, and he needs to be in more stuff!
And I'm watching it partly because Brian d'Arcy James is in it. Brian and I were friends back in high school and early college when we both were doing amateur theater and did a few shows together. I went into teaching, and Brian went to Broadway--and Hollywood. For non-theater folks, the shows you might have heard about are the musical SHREK (he originated the title character), SOMETHING ROTTEN (he originated Nick Bottom), and HAMILTON (he originated King George), though the role I remember him most for was reporter Matt Carroll in SPOTLIGHT, the movie about the reporters who broke the story about child molestation in the Catholic church.
Anyway, Alexander (Liu), is a spy who, it turns out, has been unwittingly loaded up with technology that broadcasts everything he sees and hears to an unknown adversary. Brian plays Peter Moira, a nattily-dressed fatherly figure who is second in command of the division where Alexander works. The two of them have to figure out how to trust each other while also figuring out who the adversary is. Pete has the nagging feeling that Alexander is in on the sensors in his brain, while Alexander wonders if he should vanish before Pete has him quietly killed. Trust is a major over-arcing theme in the show.
I'm liking the show quite a lot. There are layers to the storytelling, when the story backs up and shows us the same set of events from an entirely different perspective that changes everything we know. I always enjoy that kind of thing.
Another plus is that the writers got rid of that stupid, tired spy trope in which the spy is not only fighting bad guys, but is also fighting his own dysfunctional agency (because of bureaucracy, a mole, political pressure, or that the spy has been forced to go rogue and now everyone wants his head). Instead, we have an agency that WANTS the spy to succeed and WANTS to protect its own people. The administration, as embodied by Pete, is actually supportive of the spy and does its best to help him. Goodness, who knew that could happen? It's refreshing and it lets us viewers concentrate instead on the complex plotting--another thing I like.
It's way worth your time to catch the show.