It seems like Richard Madden has an issue with trains. Citadel’s opening sequence begins almost exactly the same way as the actor’s BBC hit show Bodyguard did: there’s a bomb about to go off on a train that he has to stop. But while Bodyguard’s opening was nerve-shredding, Citadel’s approach is devoid of almost any tension.
We begin in media res with Citadel agents Mason Kane (Madden) and Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) walking through an Italian train as their handler (played by none other than Stanley Tucci) talks them through their mission, should they choose to accept it. It all seems pretty simple: find the guy with the briefcase full of explosives and save the passengers. But something major goes wrong that leaves their whole agency in danger.
The issue with this opener lies in its tonal mismatch. The David Weil-created drama veers away from grittier ones like the aforementioned Bodyguard and leans much more into the James Bond and Mission: Impossible school of spy-fare. It’s full of soft-focus and pastel colors, funky gadgets, and witty dialogue.
This makes it look gorgeous, sure, but it feels incongruous with the gravity of the set-up as it unfolds – which it turns out, is pivotal to the premise of the whole show. We’ll side-step major spoiler territory here but in the wake of this mission, the whole Citadel agency falls and its agents have their memories wiped.
When the show cuts to eight years later, it all falls a bit cold too. We pick up with our former agents in their new lives as their enemy – a powerful crime syndicate called Manticore led by Lesley Manville – grows. To defeat them, they’re told they’ll have to confront their past and regain their memories.
While it’s an intriguing set-up, we’re never given the chance to get into the flow of the story as the narrative crisscrosses between different scenes frequently. The fact these are often marked with hard transitions (there’s an awful lot of cutting to black)…
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