Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Citadel’ On Prime Video, Where Two Spies Protect Humanity After Their Memories Were Wiped

We’re not against the broad action series that have been premiering on the streaming services of late. They are looking to appeal to broader audiences, which is why it’s not a surprise that shows like The Night Agent have proven to be very popular. Now Prime Video is getting in on the action with a new series that has just enough character development to make all the action sequences worth watching.

CITADEL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A shot of the sun from below, then we see upside down trees, and an upside down train approach. Then we see inside the train as the shot slowly turns right-side-up. “ITALIAN ALPS.”

The Gist: On the train, a woman in a slinky red dress takes a seat. Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), an agent for the independent spy organization Citadel, has been eyeing a Roumanian agent who supposedly has plutonium in his bag. She’s working on instructions from Citadel’s chief tech officer, Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci). Suddenly, a familiar face sits next to her: Mason Kane (Richard Madden). They used to be partners, but they’ve been working solo for awhile. Mason is also tailing someone who’s tailing the guy with the plutonium.

Both use their spy skills to neutralize the people they’re tailing; Mason is busy with his guy in a lavatory, while Nadia holds a gun to the guy with the plutonium. That’s when she finds out that Manticore, a rival spy organization, has gone through the process of killing every Citadel agent, thanks to one of her Citadel colleagues, who leaked their locations. As well as Nadia and Mason neutralize everyone on the train, they can’t stop the guy from blowing up the dining car they’re in.

Mason wakes up in a hospital, not knowing who he is or why he got there. All he knows is the name on his passport and the fact that he had a wedding band on (both part of his cover).

In the meantime, Great Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., Dahlia Archer (Lesley Manville), gets word that the “Citadel X”, a case with all of the organizations secrets, including codes for all the nuclear weapons on the planet, is in the hands of the CIA. She tells Secretary of State McCulough (Peter Gerety) that he needs to tell her where it is. But she’s not asking as an ambassador; she’s asking as a representative of Manticore.

Eight years later, Mason is living as Kyle Conroy in Eugene, Oregon with his wife Abby (Ashleigh Cummings) and daughter Hendrix (Caoilinn Springall). He’s been having visions of the train explosion, and he sees Nadia’s face, but has no idea who she is. He feels adrift, as he tells his therapist (Timothy Busfield).

One night, Bernard breaks into his house and holds the Conroys at gunpoint. He puts them in a special car, gasses them, and takes them to a hideout in Wyoming. He explains everything: Mason used to be in Citadel, which is a country-less organization that’s the last line of defense for all that’s good in the world. Manticore is the source of lots of tragic events, and they’ve accelerated their efforts since they destroyed Citadel. They now have the Citadel X case, and he needs Mason’s help to get the case back. Mason feels can’t do it, but Bernard is sure his muscle memory will help him.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The feel of Citadel isn’t far off from the recent reboot of True Lies, or Chopra Jonas’ previous series, Quantico.

Our Take: Citadel has had a bit of a checkered history, with executive producers Joe and Anthony Russo firing the original showrunner, Josh Applebaum, over creative differences. The new showrunner, David Weil (Hunters) did a lot of reshoots that concentrated more on character and less on action. Sometimes when there’s been that much disruption during production, you see the results in a patchwork pilot or even during the first few episodes. Fortunately, Citadel doesn’t suffer from the switch in direction.

There are parts of the first two episodes, which really need to be watched in tandem so you can see what happened to both Mason and Nadia after the train wreck, that are eyeroll-inducing, but there are also parts that are fun to watch. The show is slick and doesn’t take itself too seriously, and the episodes clock in at under 40 minutes. It’s one of those shows that you watch in spite of yourself and really enjoy, or watch when you want to take a break from the prestige stuff and just want to watch good looking people playing spy for a little while.

Earlier we compared Citadel to the CBS reboot of True Lies, and this comparison shows the fine line between “slick fun” and “dumb.” It comes with sharp dialogue and not throwing generic characters at viewers for 40 minutes. Weil gives us just enough about Mason, Nadia and Bernard to want to find out more about how they all operated together when Citadel was at its peak. The banter between Nadia and Mason in the first sequence tells us that there was a romantic relationship there, but that their partnership as agents was even more important. How that got destroyed, and if one or both had anything to do with leaking the spies’ locations to Manticore, is definitely at the heart of this first season.

Also, it’ll be interesting to see one member of the pair able to rely on memories that were stored in Citadel’s cloud, and the other needing to rely on instinct, pieces of memory that pop into their heads, and training alone.

Chopra Jonas and Madden have proven themselves in action-oriented dramas in the past, and they have good chemistry here. Tucci plays Bernard with his usual brand of haughty self-regard, and makes self-aggrandizing lines drily funny. Manville’s character quickly becomes the show’s Big Bad, and she plays Dahlia’s unrestrained evil with aplomb.

The series definitely has a sense of humor, but doesn’t try to lay it on too thick. Instead of forcing in gags and inside jokes, Citadel lets the action, and the characters’ interactions with each other, dominate. That’s another way that it succeeds where other spy dramas of recent vintage don’t.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first two episodes.

Parting Shot: We go back eight years, to the fiery wreckage of the train in the Italian Alps. Suddenly, Nadia pops up from the water and gasps.

Sleeper Star: It feels like Mason’s wife Abby, played by Ashleigh Cummings, will be part of the action in some form, maybe just as Mason’s motivation to help Bernard destroy Manticore. Her part is one of the few that is a bit underdeveloped, but hopefully she’ll get more to do in the other five episodes in the first season.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Nadia talks to Mason on the train about how they were a team but not anymore, she switches languages for each sentence. We guess that’s to show how many she knows. But who talks like that?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Citadel is firmly in the “dumb fun” category of streaming shows. It’s not going to make you think too hard, but its slick setting, (mostly) crackling dialogue and fun action sequences will make those 40-minute episodes go by even faster.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.