![]() Richard Jenkins plays Steven Frost, the head of the CIA station, and it’s fascinating to watch Frost work through several tricky situations, and along the way, ponder just how cutthroat he’s willing to be in pursuit of a promotion. But once the show gets beyond that bumpy first installment, it generally settles into a pleasing groove, one that often allows the stellar cast to do its captivating work. The pilot for “Berlin Station” has a careening energy and is overly packed with convoluted set-up (at one point, several characters become agitated over the fate of a man named Gerald, and it’s not ideal that, among the thicket of rapidly introduced characters, Gerald hadn’t made much of an impression). As was the case in the fifth season of “Homeland,” “Berlin Station” gets a great deal of mileage out of shooting in the city’s ragged neighborhoods and pulsing nightclubs, and the versatile Armitage, who supplies some of the coiled intensity he brought to “Hannibal,” looks at home in both. It’s a turbulent time for agency employees in Europe, given that an Edward Snowden-like figure has been leaking some of the CIA’s juiciest secrets to the press, and a number of those revelations have caused problems for Berlin-based spies in particular. The action kicks off when well-regarded CIA analyst Daniel Miller ( Richard Armitage) decides to become a field agent and is assigned to Berlin. “Berlin Station” is not quite as cerebral as “The Americans” or “Rubicon,” and it occasionally cuts corners in its rush to create narrative momentum, but the Epix series has an outstanding cast that takes its reasonably solid storytelling and raises it a few notches through sheer talent and charisma. ![]() Speaking of obscurity, at times, “Berlin Station” recalls the little-known but fondly remembered AMC drama “Rubicon,” which depicted the pressure-cooker environment that spies, intelligence bureaucrats, and analysts contend with on a daily basis, and the self-destructive tendencies and elaborate coping strategies they often develop as a result. But “Berlin Station,” a contemporary serial set among CIA and German operatives in that European city, is a credible option for those who enjoy “Homeland,” and appreciate its character-driven moments enough to patiently ride out the inconsistencies of the Showtime drama’s most recent seasons. The show doesn’t reinvent the spy drama for the modern era, nor does it rise to the level of some of the most captivating secret-agent thrillers of recent years (e.g., “London Spy,” “Deutschland 83,” and “The Americans,” the last two of which flash back to the fraught Cold War of the ’80s). The good news is, even in a marketplace flooded with content, that strategy may work, given the extraordinary caliber of the cast in its first drama, “ Berlin Station.” The little-known premium cable channel is trying to become less obscure by using an old strategy: It’s cooking up original series it hopes will create the kind of buzz that will prompt viewers to seek out the network. The fact that a drama about espionage is premiering on Epix is more likely to prompt the question: “What is Epix?” than it is to inspire excitement.
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