I seldom compose a review of just the first episode of a new TV series. However, this pilot was surprisingly good and I cannot refrain from some positive remarks. The usual American spy-thriller TV series are utter nonsense albeit entertaining like 'Covert Affairs' where the staff of the CIA seem to wallow in super luxurious offices. Instead, in this series, the CIA offices at Langley are shown as drab and purely functional like the bare winter landscape outside, devoid of glamour.. We are comfortably reminded that CIA agents are not allowed to carry weapons when they are operating stateside so no exciting 'bang-bang' chases likely unless the action moves abroad. There is, however, one short car chase through Manhattan which is quite realistic.
Indeed, 'Allegiance' seems more realistic than the usual American spy series. Okay there is an element of pandering to the average Fox News fed audience in reflection of New Cold War politics, so the Russians are the renewed really nasty villains with evil sadistic accents and no redeeming features. The Russian stereotypes now head the list of undesirables thus demoting the Arabs and Serbs to second and third rank respectively in degree of villainy. The ghastly opening scene shows a group of suited male Russians and one woman in an underground basement about to consign a bound but nor gagged screaming victim to a horrible death by cremating him alive in a heating furnace. Either the script writers dreamed up such a grisly form of execution or they copied a similar scene from the 1974 French police movie ' Borsalino and Co.' where the Mob cremates a live victim by serving him up as fuel for a speeding steam locomotive. The point of such a vividly revolting scene at the very beginning of 'Allegiance' is revealed during the episode. The principal characters are the family and acquaintances of a middle–aged man, Mark O'Connor, married to Katya a Russian emigrant. They are apparently enjoying a comfortable life in a fashionably renovated period town house across the East River from Manhattan. The couple live with their two daughters; a grown up Natalie and Sarah of around 12. Their son Alex has recently joined the CIA at Langley where his exceptional natural talents as an analyst and linguist are impressing his superiors at the time when a leakage of a Russian plot to stage a massive 911 like action against America has come to the attention of the CIA. They need to know the identity of the plotters and more details of the plot itself. They hope to gather most of the vital information from a female Russian secret service agent who has expressed a wish to defect to the head of the CIA office in New York. The family's supposed cosy life is about to end. The day begins with an urgent phone call from Mark who has just left an exotic foods supermarket where he has learned the devastating news that among 16 varieties of white potatoes there are no sweet white potatoes which were on Katya's shopping list. The sales woman say she never hear of such sweet spuds (my own wife bought some the other day so they do exist) . After a modicum of phone bickering Mark makes his way home. He has hardly settled in back home when the door-bell rings and . I shall omit the rest of the exciting evolution of events in episode 1 . If the momentum and intrigue of this pilot is maintained 'Allegiance' might end among the top ten of US TV series in 2015.
Indeed, 'Allegiance' seems more realistic than the usual American spy series. Okay there is an element of pandering to the average Fox News fed audience in reflection of New Cold War politics, so the Russians are the renewed really nasty villains with evil sadistic accents and no redeeming features. The Russian stereotypes now head the list of undesirables thus demoting the Arabs and Serbs to second and third rank respectively in degree of villainy. The ghastly opening scene shows a group of suited male Russians and one woman in an underground basement about to consign a bound but nor gagged screaming victim to a horrible death by cremating him alive in a heating furnace. Either the script writers dreamed up such a grisly form of execution or they copied a similar scene from the 1974 French police movie ' Borsalino and Co.' where the Mob cremates a live victim by serving him up as fuel for a speeding steam locomotive. The point of such a vividly revolting scene at the very beginning of 'Allegiance' is revealed during the episode. The principal characters are the family and acquaintances of a middle–aged man, Mark O'Connor, married to Katya a Russian emigrant. They are apparently enjoying a comfortable life in a fashionably renovated period town house across the East River from Manhattan. The couple live with their two daughters; a grown up Natalie and Sarah of around 12. Their son Alex has recently joined the CIA at Langley where his exceptional natural talents as an analyst and linguist are impressing his superiors at the time when a leakage of a Russian plot to stage a massive 911 like action against America has come to the attention of the CIA. They need to know the identity of the plotters and more details of the plot itself. They hope to gather most of the vital information from a female Russian secret service agent who has expressed a wish to defect to the head of the CIA office in New York. The family's supposed cosy life is about to end. The day begins with an urgent phone call from Mark who has just left an exotic foods supermarket where he has learned the devastating news that among 16 varieties of white potatoes there are no sweet white potatoes which were on Katya's shopping list. The sales woman say she never hear of such sweet spuds (my own wife bought some the other day so they do exist) . After a modicum of phone bickering Mark makes his way home. He has hardly settled in back home when the door-bell rings and . I shall omit the rest of the exciting evolution of events in episode 1 . If the momentum and intrigue of this pilot is maintained 'Allegiance' might end among the top ten of US TV series in 2015.