The Copenhagen Test Is A Subtle, Smart Cyberpunk Thriller With A Terrific Premise
Don't sleep on this show.
Nobody trusts anybody in spy stories. Whether it's John le Carré or Ian Fleming, the point of a great spy story is to make you wonder if everyone is about to double-cross everyone. And because most characters in spy stories can’t read each other's minds, the true motive of all intelligence leaks can sometimes never be known. But what if a John le Carré-style spy story, something in the mode of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, had a cyberpunk element? What if the notion of constant surveillance were taken to the next logical sci-fi step? What if the spy’s brain itself could be hacked?
This is the basic premise of the new slick Peacock series, The Copenhagen Test, which drops all eight of its episodes on December 27. The show stars Simu Liu like you’ve never seen him before, and it is one of the coolest new spy shows in a slightly overcrowded field.
As Alexander Hale, Liu delivers one of his best performances ever, as a low-key, likable secret agent, working for a watchdog intelligence agency called “The Orphanage.” That said, as the prologue of the series reveals, Hale was, at one point, a special forces soldier, and during a specific mission, was given bizarre instructions: Rescue only one hostage for a helicopter airlift, and prioritize an American citizen. Hale chooses a non-American child instead of an American woman, a fact that becomes super relevant as the show goes on.
Why? Well, although The Copenhagen Test later reveals that, as an agent of the Orphanage, Hale’s brain has been hacked by an enemy group, the psychological test he was put through with the hostage situation five years earlier was entirely analog, no cyberpunk required. This is crucial because it grounds the series in the possible before slapping you with the incredulous premise that Hale has a hidden wifi signal in his brain, transmitting everything he sees and hears.
Obviously, built into this premise are its obvious limitations. What happens when Hale is in a place with bad wifi coverage, like a subway or a basement? The series has an answer for that, and uses those moments of “reality” to have Hale touch base with whatever passes for normal interactions.
This layering is smart because, like in a le Carré-style story, the “good guys” are aware of the hack and want to keep it open, in order to find out more about how it happened. But the twist on all of this is that Hale is paired with a handler named Michelle (Melissa Barrera), who, as it turns out, was the woman in the faux-loyalty test from five years prior. So again, the cyberpunk show doesn’t need the cyberpunk premise to make you feel the uncomfortable paranoia running through Hale’s mind at all times; much of the double-crossing and espionage layering happens because characters are serving more than one master.
If all of this sounds confusing and hard to follow, that’s sort of the point. Refreshingly, The Copenhagen Test is a show that requires you to pay attention, and won’t reward you if you get lazy, and try to play on your phone while watching. Glances and prolonged eye contact matter in this show, as do throwaway lines, which, in all cases, are not actually throwaways at all.
Simu Liu and Melissa Barrera in The Copenhagen Test.
Written and created by Thomas Brandon, with additional showrunning from Jennifer Yale, The Copenhagen Test feels, at times, more like a novel than a TV show. This is to its credit, though the intensely detail-oriented aspects of the series may alienate some viewers who are looking for something on par with Black Doves. Instead, The Copenhagen Test is more in the vein of The Agency, albeit with a slightly heightened sense of reality, since the basic premise of the show requires a small suspension of disbelief.
The twists and turns in The Copenhagen Test may not make it the best spy show ever, or the best cyberpunk series, for that matter. But when those concepts collide, the series manages to be an incredible blend of both genres, and delivers a series that, if you’re smart, you won’t want to stop watching.
