The magnificent JK Simmons continues to preside over a fiendishly complex plot in the spy-fi world of parallel universes
Here we go. Deep breath. Prepare yourself for the world of Counterpart (Starz Play, Amazon Prime). Thirty years ago, East German scientists opened up a crossing into a parallel universe. Go through the door, which obviously you must never do, and you are in an almost-replica of this world in which doppelgängers carry out increasingly divergent lives to our own without our knowledge. The two worlds are at war, partly because of a flu epidemic that killed millions, partly because there is always a war. Also Indigo, an illegal programme that trains sleeper cells in the art of supplanting their “others”, which means lots of spies running around in bodies that may or may not be their own, killing people who may or may not be themselves. Above all, there is JK Simmons, whose own face is so worldly and magnificent, like a mountain capable of deep crevasses of emotion, that feasting upon it twice is still not enough.
Assuming you’re still with me, welcome back to the superlative spy thriller you have never heard of, with the name you struggle to remember. (I still keep calling it Counterfeit, which is perhaps what it would be called in the other world.) The first episode of the second season of Justin Marks’s fiendishly complex series, which happily continues to be like a cocktail made up of equal parts John le Carré and Philip K Dick then shaken not stirred by JJ Abrams, stays put in our universe (known as Alpha), though don’t be fooled into thinking this makes things any less twisty.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2SNvFon
