(TV SERIES) Citadel Season 1 - A Pretty Exciting Spy Action Series from Prime Video

I already knew about this interesting looking series on Prime Video since end of April, but as usual I wanted to wait till full season before starting to watch it. However, I somehow forgotten about it and just remembered few days ago. Apparently the first season was already finished in end of May as it only had 6 episodes So I immediately watch in the weekend and managed to finish it on the same day. OK, let's get right at it.

Brief Story Line (Warning Possible Spoiler)

Mason Kane (Richard Madden - Eternals, 1917 etc) and his partner Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas - We Can Be Heroes, Baywatch etc) were working for a global spy agency called Citadel who had been protecting the world from various threats. They were supported by tech genius Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci - Jolt, Winchell TV series etc) and fellow agent Carter Spence (Osy Ikhile). 

However, Citadel finally found their match in the form of Manticore syndicate with their most ruthless agents, the twins Anders & Davik Silje (Roland Møller - Atomic Blonde etc) and their superior Dahlia Archer (Lesley Manville - The Crown TV series etc). Eight years after the last major war between Citadel and Manticore, Mason was living a normal life under the name of Kyle Conroy, got married to Abby (Ashleigh Cummings - NOS4A2 TV series etc) and having a daughter named Hendricks (Caoilinn Springall). Meanwhile Nadia was working normal job in Valencia, Spain 

Unfortunately, their peaceful life did not last long as Manticore posed a much bigger threat now and Mason & Nadia have to save the world again. So what would happen to them? You can find out in the first season of this series.

End of Brief Story Line

OK, this series started off quite brightly and made me excited especially with the appearances of Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden as Nadia and Mason respectively, whose chemistry was quite convincing and their hand to hand fight scenes were pretty awesome. The pace was quite fast and story development was swift even in the first episode which surprised me due to its short duration (less than 40 minutes excluding opening and closing credit). Oh the ending of that episode also raised my curiosity of what would come next. 

The second episode was more fun with some humorous approach, usually involving Bernard. I thought Stanley Tucci really suit this character perfectly. As the story progressed, there seemed to be more and more surprises and twists to make it more interesting, although only one or two that probably came as a shock to me (that revelation by the end of 5th episode was one of those). Btw, the series also had some flash backs to give more clarity on how or why things occurred in the present. It might be confusing or irritating for some audience, but luckily for me it was not that difficult to grasp.

In the credits, I noticed familiar names of the Russo brothers who were Executive Producers together with few others. I read that Joe Russo was going to direct all episodes of the second season. Yes, indeed this series has been renewed and there were some spin-off already planned in the future, including Citadel: Diana which was shown after the season finale. The series itself was created by Josh Appelbaum (producer of movies like Project Almanac, Without Remorse and some others), Brian Oh and David Well (creator of Hunters TV series and co-creator of Invasion TV series).

For me the main attraction of the series was the intriguing development of Mason and Nadia's story along with other characters who had significant impact at later stage. It also has plenty of issues that could be explored in the second season, particularly after that ending. The action sequence were generally good, though the special effects were not so great (some of them looked too obviously done by computer). It made me wonder why the series could have production budget of USD 300 million for 6 episodes. After reading about it, I found out that the cost inflated due to some reshoots which meant the story had gone through significant changes. 

Overall regardless of critics' mixed reception, I personally enjoyed the series. It might not have been the best out there but it was fun and quite entertaining. I just wish it would have longer and more episodes in second season to give us more excitement. Perhaps with Joe Russo directing there would be more explosive actions as well. So if you are looking for this kind of quality, you can give this original Prime Video series a try.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars