Telly Review: The Sympathizer brims with brutality
The Sympathizer starts on Sky Atlantic at 9pm
(Sky Atlantic, Monday 9pm and NOW) might drive you bonkers in episode one. It jumps back in time a few times and then forward again, so you’re struggling to get a bead on what’s going on. Some guy known only as The Captain seems to be a North Vietnamese agent in South Vietnamese regime in the days before the city falls to forced from the north. He is an assistant to The General, a much-feared chief of the South’s forces; he is mentored by a flamboyant CIA agent played by Robert Downey Jr.; The Captain also takes orders from his North Vietnamese handler.
It’s tense, but playful too, an interrogation scene taking place in a cinema is beautifully shot even as it brims with brutality. We jump forward and The Captain is now living Los Angeles, evacuated from Saigon and working as a mole for the North Vietnamese, when he meets up with his old professor. He’s also played by Robert Downey Jr. Jesus. I’d normally hate this kind of gimmick.
But it works brilliantly here at ratcheting up the temperature, a constant reminder that nothing is at it seems. (Just as well it works, Downey Jr plays four characters in total in this seven parter.)
It works because you know this is all going to unravel, you’re just not sure why. The Captain is living in a bubble in the United States, made up of the old regime. The General is still holding sway and he’s convinced there is a spy in their group – so naturally he asks The Captain to expose the rat. The pace of the plot is just right, as you’d expect from a show based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
It’s got a heart too. There is a heart-breaking scene during the evacuation when The Captain’s friend’s wife and baby are killed by a shell. Then in LA, The Captain falls for Sofia, a 46 year old free-love fan played by Sandra Oh, who gets all the best lines about being an American of Asian descent in 1970s America.
It took me a while to warm to The Sympathizer, thanks to the time-jumping at the start and the fact that I was expecting a straight-up war story like The Killing Fields. What I got was something different. A TV show that feels like a brilliant movie, rejecting traditional story-telling, indulging in gorgeous set-pieces and over-using Robert Downey Jr because you’d can’t really over-use him - he’s that good in every part.
My wife tuned out of this after ten minutes, accusing me of only liking The Sympathizer because it has double agents. Harsh. Ten minutes later she was back in, agreeing this was the best thing we’d seen in ages. Give it a watch.
