The Night Agent: Season One - DVD Review

[Michael Scott]

The Night Agent: Season One



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
It’s no secret that “streaming original” shows are not exactly very common on home video. The streaming platforms usually like to keep them relegated TO the streaming platforms as an incentive to subscribe, but as the years go by a few of the platforms have begun to trickle out some of their shows and original films onto home video as well. Paramount+ was probably the most aggressive in releasing their IP’s onto disc, but little bit by little bit places like Netflix and Amazon Prime have allowed a few shows to come on over to the physical side of the game, and it looks like Sony got the rights to re-distribute Netflix’s surprise hit The Night Agent onto DVD (*sigh, more about that later).

The Night Agent’s first season (with a second on the way) was one of those show that I saw on Netflix, but never bothered watching until earlier this year when I heard that it had sort of blown up social media with its popularity. The cover looked bland and boring, with another Altered Carbon glossy look to the trailer, just with an FBI “super agent” type of look to it. However, when I saw the accolades it was getting I decided to binge watch it back in January of this year when I was bedridden with the flu. End result of my boredom? Well, it actually turned out to be an interesting mix of 24 style action, and hints of Reacher, contained in a nice 10 episode runtime.

The show revolves around low level FBI agent Peter Sutherland, who is stuck manning an emergency helpline for black ops agents as a sort of penance for his disgraced FBI father’s fall from grace years ago. Peter’s life of trying to atone (and exonerate) his father’s past has lead him to a dead end job where his entire purpose is to monitor a phone that never ring. Until one night where it does. One the other hand is Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan) a young software developer who has lost it all whose life gets turned upside down when it turns out her “normal” parents are in fact spies who have been targeted by an unknown group. Now she’s been giving this mysterious number by them to call in case of emergency, and she gets our friend Peter.

At first it seems like Peter is simply going to be a once and done courier for Rose as they figure out what group of foreign nationals were targeting her parents, but soon it becomes obvious that this goes much deeper, leading straight for the White House. Peter has no choice but to go on the run with Rose, telling no one about his suspicions, giving the two time to figure out who in the White House is involved, and just how deep the corruption goes.
The Night Agent is a pretty fun show that actually surprised me. There’s a little bit of bland nature to Gabriel Basson’s Peter Sutherland (he’s no Jack Reacher), but overall the leads are entertaining, and the action pretty intense. While I will fully admit that this is a solid narrative, I did notice some well worn tropes in the structure. Mainly in regards to the “who knows who the good guys and the bad guys are. It’s a corrupted chain of command” type of action story that we’ve seen a million times. However, the payoff for the show is rather good, climaxing in a giant rescue of the President herself, as well as a novel twist on Peter’s obsession with exonerating his disgraced FBI agent father (who Peter adamantly believes was setup). The story finishes completely without any major cliffhangers, and while a second season IS planned, it works quite well on it’s own.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

The Night Agent: Season One comes spread across 4 DVD-9’s which luckily gives plenty of room for a healthy bitrate. Sadly this is the ONE major complaint I have with the series, and it’s not that the DVD’s themselves are badly done. It’s just the fact that this didn’t even get a Blu-ray release, let along a 4K UHD release since the show was streamed in 4K. The discs themselves look solid, with minimal compression (a few bouts of digital noise due to the dark nature of the show and DVD’s limitations and some minor block aside), and the digital looking image has a dark blue and green tinge to everything. Blacks are very solid and impressive for a DVD, and detail is impressive, 480p notwithstanding. All in all, a solid DVD release.







Audio:

The singular 5.1 Dolby Digital lossy track sounds quite pleasant, and does everything asked of it with aplomb. The show alternates between whisper quiet dialog centric bits where Peter and Rose are discussing their next move, to highly explosive action bits that really get the blood pumping. There’s a good sense of directionality in the mix, as you can pick up the creaks and groans of floor boards shifting during a home invasion, to the roar and chaos of a hectic car chase and shootout. Bass response is quite ample (though not AS punchy as I was expecting), and the overall fidelity is solid. Comparing it to the Netflix stream I feel the DVD has a lightly better handle on compression, but the enhanced audio does sound a bit “richer” in the streaming version.





Extras:

• Episode 1 Commentary With Executive Producer Shawn Ryan
• 12 Deleted Scenes
• Blooper Reel
• Episode 1 VFX
• Episode 10 VFX

Final Score: ​

The Night Agent: Season One was one of the better surprise shows of 2023. At this point and time I feel that Netflix has overdone their original shows a bit much, but this series actually was pleasantly entertaining. In some ways it reminded me of the good old days of 24, mixed with some of the more brutal action of the modern day cable shows. It actually got one of the highest viewership ratings of all of Netflix’s original shows last year, and I’m genuinely rather excited for season 2. It’s not PERFECT, but it’s a very stable show among a host of bland actioneers on streaming channels right now. My only real complaint will go back to ONLY releasing the show on DVD instead of 4K and Blu-ray. I can understand if the numbers don’t warrant the extra pressings for 4K (it happens, especially in the TV world), but bypassing Blu-ray at this point just feels archaic. Still, a solid show and a good thumbs up from me.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Gabriel Basso, Luciane Buchanant, Fola Evans-Akingbola, Hong Chau
Created by: Shawn Ryan
Aspect Ratio: 2.20:1 MPEG2
Audio: English: Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles: English, English SDH
Studio: Sony Pictures
Rated: NR
Runtime: 489 Minutes
DVD Release Date: October 8th, 2024

Recommendation: Solid Watch