Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Kim Cattrall, Kelsey Grammer, Johnny Flynn, Elena Delia, Donald Sage Mackay, Tim Ahern, Carlyss Peer, Jennifer Armour, David Menkin, Christopher Ragland, Joseph Balderrama, Akie Kotabe, Nettie Chickering, Laurel Lefkow, Jason Watkins, Rob Benedict, Tyreke Leslie, Vivek Maden, Richard Southgate, Ian Porter, Lily Lefkow, David Menkin, Roy McCrerey, Julee Cerda, Walles Hamonde, Rachael Stirling, Philipe Bosher, Clay Zackery, Ben Cura, David Duchovny, Aaron Teoh, Sotty Pong, Kerry Shale.
One woman stands aloft when it comes to dissecting the immense hold and almost institutional grip that the C.I.A. had shaping the United States of America since its formation from the bones of the Office of Strategic Services, and in the third series of the dramatised reconstruction of the life and at times formerly classified insight of events surrounding the top levels of espionage afforded her, Eloise Page’s open version in Central Intelligence reveals more to the listener than they might have expected.
With the outcome of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s assassination firmly examined and dealt with almost as a matter of fact, the new series deals comprehensively with the presidential term of his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and whilst no new nuggets of information, clues, or accusation are forthcoming regarding anything to do with the tragic events in Dallas , what transpires is just how much President Johnson required to be in charge of every piece of knowledge that that came his way from sources close at home and that from the farthest reaches of the world, and yet not the in depth information that you would expect, it was more of a bite size serving, tasting information in the same way that a patron of a restaurant would make a judgement call after being served an amuse-bouche and expecting then to describe the full menu.
Kim Cattrall and Elena Delia return to the roles of the elder and younger versions of the fiercely intellectual and logical Eloise Page, but this time the spotlight is almost shared ferociously with the addition of Kelsey Grammer as the erstwhile 36th man to hold the highest office in American politics, and the sincerity in which the actor portrays him is understand that little bit more of the drive within the legend, the darkness perhaps within the soul.
Also making his entrance into the series is David Duchovny as Bill Colby, a man who would come to feature as the Director of Central Intelligence during the Nixon/Ford era, and it is that sense of continuing the narrative at all costs but to whom the future relationship with Russia hinged, and to who the words as he walked through Red Square at the end of the First Cold War in 1989 alone and unfollowed, were “That was my victory parade”, seem absolutely prophetic.
Central Intelligence is eye-opening; it is the narrative of a woman who not only took on the men in the game of spies and agents, but who came out on top, and one in which the very fabric of modern America stands, shaped by the then unseen hands of Eloise Page.
Ian D. Hall