Spy City Review: Operation Beethoven (Season 1 Episode 1)
In 1960s Berlin, anything can happen, and most of it isn’t good. Spy City Season 1 Episode 1 “Operation Beethoven,” is a slick if darkly toned thriller which deals with a mystery that isn’t fully revealed as of yet.
There’s a rocket technology that’s in play between the UK, US, and the Soviets, but seeing as the engineer leading the project is dead by the end of the episode, what happens there is really anybody’s guess.
That might be the problem with Spy City: too much intrigue, too little information.
We do get upfront that Captain Fielding Scott (Dominic Cooper) killed a British agent prior to the proper start of the show, which led to his banishment from intelligence work to academia. He’s not a loose cannon, though; he’s a stand-up, eerily calm guy, even if he did abandon his lover and made her think he was dead.
Severine Bloch (Romane Portail), the abandoned lover, is easily one of the most interesting characters in the show — a woman in a room full of men, who doesn’t get the respect she deserves.
For characters so young or baby-faced, a lot of them served in World War II, which seems bizarre because most of them would’ve been teenagers.
A lot of Spy City’s initial episode seems a little muddled story-wise and lacks a clear drive for many of its characters, until the engineer leading the rocket project is killed along with his wife and child.
Then, it becomes a race to find a mole inside their little intelligence circle.
But there’s not a lot of suspense as to who that mole is, since it’s revealed at the beginning of the episode that it’s unassuming Eliza Hahn (Leonie Benesch), Scott’s secretary, who’s been feeding information to the East German authorities. She’s trying to save her boyfriend, Reinhart (Ben Münchow) from being imprisoned.
Her conflict between not being a mole and committing to giving intelligence over to the series’ bad guys isn’t well-defined. There’s not much of a conflict. She has to do what she’s going to do to save Reinhart. Maybe her inner conflict will blossom, but for now, it doesn’t really exist.
There are some cool stylistic choices Spy City makes, like including footage of actual 1961 Berlin. The scene where Scott kills an East German operative is an intense and brutal moment witnessed by the scientist that hits home the true cost of spycraft. The cinematography is elegant, and the production design accurate.
It’s a well-made show, if not necessarily a well-written show.
Spy City will likely improve as it goes on — often, the first episode of a short series like this can be hard to execute. However, if it wants to get through its plot in six episodes, it better pick up the pace. Unlike a show like Bodyguard, which kicked off its main plot very quickly, this show makes its first episode mostly set-up.
The adventures of Captain Fielding Scott have potential, and as Spy City progresses, hopefully, it focuses on moving its storyline along while keeping the intense thriller vibe.
What did you think of this episode of Spy City? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Spy City airs Thursdays on AMC+.
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Ruth Johnson
Ruth Johnson is a screenwriter, scholar, and cultural critic who enjoys discussing TV, film, and fandom.