Citadel S01 E01-03 (Amazon Prime).
Oh, Amazon. How do you manage to spend so much on programmes and end with so little? Citadel is the second-most expensive TV show ever, behind Amazon's Rings Of Power. That it paid for just six 40-minute episodes is staggering, meaning in terms of cost per unit time, probably by far the most expensive. Rings of Power was a misfire: extraordinarily beautiful, but also incredibly dull. (So dull that I never even finished the season, despite that it should have been squarely in my interest zone.) Citadel's problem is apparently troubled production history, which means millions wasted in extended gestation, re-writes, re-shoots, etc. The end product is...well, let's just say it's lacking on value for money.
Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra play as top spies Mason Kane and Nadia Sinh respectively, operatives of "Citadel", the best spy agency ever, which apparently is a private operation funded by rich people for justice and good and saving the world. Stanley Tucci plays the tech whizz. Citadel square off against an evil super-agency called Manticore. Obviously, this is perhaps pitched squarely around James Bond level: lavish HQs and lairs, tech gizmos, fist-, knife and gunfights by athletic heroes against the bad guys - however perhaps a more 80s Bond, where the tech got a little hyper. Or more realistically, perhaps, a Bond setting with leanings towards the modern superhero canon (e.g. Agents of SHIELD).
You know what you're getting, and you get it. It's not clever, it's not original, but it's a decent base for a series. Madden, Chopra, Tucci et al. do their jobs fine, the script is fine, the direction mostly fine, overall it's mostly fun, but... unfortunately, it also has problems.
40 minutes per episode I found too short, and there will only only six episodes in season 1. A lot could be done in that time, but not when large amounts of time is diverted by fight scenes, exposition, and the required level of spy hijinx plot reveals: it lacks depth. It is horribly over-CGIed: far too much of this looks fake, and there's a lot to be said for real sets and locations. Finally, it's got that hateful fast-cutting fight scene style. The sort where you don't really know what's going on because you're seeing two minutes of 400 fraction-of-a-second cuts from different angles. This creates an illusion of pace and excitement, but as far as I'm concerned just an illusion: I suspect when directors don't have any faith in their fight co-ordinators and stunt/acting teams to make it look good without. Also, DO NOT PUT PREVIEWS OF THE NEXT EPISODE AT THE END. Why ruin the cliffhanger you just set up by giving it away 90 seconds later?
So, Citadel. I'm going to say it's okay. Citadel season 2 has already been greenlit despite this underwhelming start: a major reason they may have persisted is because it's planned as part of a whole universe with spin-offs in other countries intended, and perhaps they weren't willing to ditch it so early. I'm fine with it continuing, because I think it's worth giving the producers a shot at creating their vision unencumbered by the apparent fustercluck that occurred during season 1's development. It could turn out well.
