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Spy tale ‘Allegiance’ fails to deliver like FX’s ‘Americans’

3 min read

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the success of the FX drama “The Americans” has begotten imitators – that’s the natural order of things in television. What’s rarely clear, though, is why the imitations rarely seem as interesting as the originals.

That’s the case with “Allegiance,” a spy-versus-spy dramatic series premiering Thursday on NBC. The series, about a young CIA analyst whose Russian-born mother and American-born father did some spying back in the day, is moderately engaging at first, until it squanders much of its fragile credibility in what can only be judged as a desperate attempt to set itself apart from “The Americans.”

Alex O’Connor (Gavin Stenhouse) is a rookie analyst with a singular command of arcane information, not to mention the ability to speak perfect Russian. The latter skill comes from his mother, Katya (Hope Davis), a physician and former agent for the Russian SVR foreign intelligence service, married to businessman Mark O’Connor (Scott Cohen). Their elder daughter, Natalie (Margarita Levieva) knows about her parents’ past, but Alex and his younger sister, Sarah (Alexandra Peters) do not.

At this point in the pilot, we don’t stop to wonder how stupid the CIA would have to be to hire a young guy whose mother was a Russian spy, but once other pilars of credibility start to wobble, the thought is more likely to wander through our minds.

Rookie though he may be, Alex is asked to help interview an SVR agent who wants to defect after she witnesses another agent brutally exterminated. She says she has useful information, but is she lying or telling the truth? Alex figures it out, displaying jaw dropping deductive skills worthy of a modern day Sherlock Holmes. Go figure.

Things become more complicated when the SVR gets wind of the fact that the son of their sleeper agents is working for the CIA. The O’Connors’ old SVR nemesis, Victor Dobrynin (Morgan Spector) pressures the O’Connor into turning Alex to spy for Russia. As unlikely as that seems, the premiere’s eventual denouement is even more ridiculous.

Things get both better and worse in the next two episodes, as the show pits Alex against his parents and elder sister, while his parents try to both protect Alex from the SVR and use him as an unwitting source of information. Alex doesn’t know his parents are spies, or that they are also trying to keep him from getting offed by the SVR.

If you’re able to block this bushwa from your thinking, “Allegiance” is a competent thriller. But bushwa-blocking is easier said than done as the labrynthine family dynamic dominates each of the three episodes sent to critics for review.

The show is helped by several solid performances, including Davis, Levieva and Stenhouse. Cohen is a decent utility player, but not quite up to the complexities of the role of Mark O’Connor, which, like all the roles, is overwritten anyway.

The show was created by George Nolfi based on an Israeli drama called “Ta Gordin,” or “Gordin’s Cell.” But it’s clear the show means to tell viewers, “If you like ‘The Americans,’ you’ll like ‘Allegiance.”‘

Well, maybe – if you scrunch up your face and squint really tight.

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