The Recruit

Our Review

Noah Centineo’s CIA lawyer dramedy is a fizzy, globe-trotting take on the spy genre: Owen Hendricks, a first-year attorney at the Agency, stumbles into field work when a captured asset starts blackmailing the CIA via his case files. The joke engine — a lawyer who read the manual on espionage but has never been punched — meets its match in Laura Haddock’s Max, a world-weary asset with leverage, and the comedy-action blend (Owen negotiating with warlords while covered in blood, still citing case law) is genuinely fresh.

Season 1 is the Max problem (she’s fun, dangerous, and the show’s best asset — pun intended); season 2 sends Owen to South Korea, with a North Korean asset subplot that’s genuinely moving and a bigger conspiracy pulling the whole CIA into daylight. Centineo’s likability is the engine — the show knows he’s a golden retriever in a suit. Fun, fast, and aware that spy work is mostly paperwork with occasional gunfire.

Verdict: Watch it. The breeziest show about international espionage ever made — a poolside thriller.