ALIAS
Jennifer Garner, Ron Rifkin, Victor Garber
Created by JJ Abrams
Alias is a fantastic, if slightly formulaic action show, with an ever-present sense of impending doom about it. The show is structured so that the story is spread over two half-episodes - so you get the end of one story and the beginning of the next in the same hour-long programme. This is an innovative and highly effective way of maintaining the audience's interest from one week to the next. Although, with a cast and plot as good as this, that's really just icing on the cake.
Not to be confused with the low-key private eye comic of the same name - which is also excellent - Alias is the best new show to come out of the rather hit-and-miss American market since Buffy. And it's all thanks to Jennifer Garner, whose refreshingly down-to-earth portrayal of Sydney Bristow makes this programme compelling viewing.
However, the first thing I noticed was her arse.
Yes, yes. Before you cry "LETCH," and start baying for my blood, let me expand upon that bold statement.
As good as shows like Dark Angel and Buffy might be, with the action and the smacking and such, neither Jessica Alba nor Sarah Michelle Gellar really look quite as capable as Jennifer Garner. To be honest, they don't have to: they have superpowers. Alias' Sydney Bristow, on the other hand, is very much a normal young woman. So Garner has to look the part.
What this means is, while she's hardly female bodybuilder material (she's a trained dancer), Garner is absolutely solid. Jennifer Garner looks like a spy. She looks like she could break your neck without breaking a sweat. Buffy and Dark Angel…well…they're just too damn skinny.
I like her, anyway.
Like a lot of genre shows, there's an element of quest about Alias. And, yes, it sounds like something you might have heard before: Sydney Bristow is Trapped Between a Rock and a Hard Place, and is Looking For a Way Out. Original, it ain't. But dramatically, you can't fault it.
While the story is almost entirely mission-based - Sydney zooms around the world, looking for/blowing up/slapping things and/or people - Alias is really about the pressure that secrets bring to bear on one's life. Every conversation, every scene is coloured by the audience's knowledge that one or more people in the room are lying to the others, being lied to, or both. Not only that, but the audience knows, and
Sydney knows, that Truth Equals Death.
It's this overarcing element, this sense of imminent menace that drives Alias. And damn, it's good.
The core cast - even the ones who don't have much to do - are very comfortable in their roles. Bradley Cooper, who plays Sydney's journalist/almost-boyfriend, is fairly interesting to watch, in a slow-motion car crash sort of way. Not because he's a bad actor, far from it, but because we know that he's heading for a nasty fall, further down the line. Marshall, Sydney's technical aide, is an amusing comic turn, a sort of twentysomething Q with attention deficit disorder.
Perhaps the most sympathetic character in the series, aside from Sydney herself, is Dixon, played by Carl Lumbly. He's a nice guy, a regular Joe who, much like Sydney at first, thinks that he's fighting the good fight. In fact, he's just about the only character in the show without a hidden agenda. This only serves to reinforce the tragic aspect of the story.
Sydney Bristow finds out, early in episode one, that she's working for The Opposition, and not The Good Guys. If she tells anybody about her double life, they die, and so could she. Deciding that she can't stand by and see so many good people duped into serving the enemy, Sydney becomes a double agent, working alongside the CIA to bring down her evil bosses. Including her father. Or so it seems at first...
Alias is one of those rare things: an American spy drama that's actually worth watching. Almost entirely grey in moral terms, it's bright and innovative in all other respects. The cast are well drawn and interesting, the lead even more so. Jennifer Garner is superb as Sydney Bristow. She's sympathetic without being drippy, extremely levelheaded, and (for a change) her sexuality is understated.
So remember that, the next time you sit through creepy old James Bond #367: Creaking Through The Old Routines Again, Bangity-Bang. Alias is everything Bond should have been. Sexy. Tense. Exciting. Unmissable.
So move over, Grandad. There's a new spy in town.
Review text (C) Matthew Craig
Originally published in the pop culture magazine Robot Fist