Otto Farrant plays Alex Rider, an ordinary teenager enlisted to work on behalf of MI6, where he uses skills he didn't know he had to become an extraordinary spy.Sony Pictures Television
Are you in the mood for a clever, but sensitive young hero to root for? Who isn’t, in these bleak and discordant days? Add some gripping espionage to the mix and we have ourselves a lovely distraction.
Alex Rider (newly arrived on Amazon Prime Video) is a beauty of an entertaining series. It’s got several threads – spies, lies, skullduggery, teenage kicks, gripping action sequences – that are woven together nicely.
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Based on the popular young adult novels by Anthony Horowitz, the adaptation leans heavily on the “adult” part of the narrative while keeping the “young” strand intact. In the books, one gathers, Alex Rider is a teenage James Bond, an orphan who becomes a wizard with spying gadgetry and has many exciting adventures. Here, the tone is more sombre (it’s worth noting that Horowitz also created Foyle’s War) and meant to command the attention of adults familiar with the spy series Spooks and the works of John Le Carré.
When we meet Alex (Otto Farrant), he’s in his late teens at school in London, a clever young man known to his schoolmates for his skill at opening locks and mastery of the online universe. He lives with his uncle, a nice man he understands to be employed in a boring banking job, and their home is run by a nice woman who takes care of him and the household. Soon enough, his uncle is dead and an angry, prying Alex figures out his uncle was a spy and shot dead on some very murky mission.
Otto Farrant and Brenock O'Connor as Tom Harris in Alex Rider.Sony Pictures Television
From there the series is as much about betrayals and the grubby business of espionage as it is about a clever lad’s daring adventures. His uncle, he knows, worked for “the security services, MI6 or something.” He’s then informed by the menacing head of the organization, Alan Blunt (nicely played for chilling cynicism by Stephen Dillane), that his uncle actually worked for a special sub-section of the British secret service. “We take care of the bigger picture and we use any means necessary,” Blunt says dryly.
Our hero is unimpressed, but is swiftly and heartlessly coerced into doing some work for the organization. This is where we know we’re in grown-up espionage territory. Spying is a sordid enterprise and Alex is looking at it, and the adult world, with the eyes of a young person who has been pulled too fast into it.
Stephen Dillane as Alan Blunt, the menacing head of MI6, in Alex Rider.Sony Pictures Television
The point of the story is to have Alex infiltrate a mysterious school called Point Blanc, somewhere in Europe, that seems to be a private boot-camp for the troubled children of millionaires, ones who tend to be caught up in devious and dubious business practices. People who are connected to Point Blanc have a habit of dying in ugly circumstances and Alex will be the Trojan horse to infiltrate it.
It’s a while before Alex actually engages with the mysterious Point Blanc, and until he gets there the series offers a take on the espionage genre that is both fresh, from being seen through a youth’s eyes, and an intriguing and tense storyline to keep you gripped. This is a spy thriller with plenty of action featuring a young man who still wants some teenage kicks – he’s interested in girls, alcohol is something his friends indulge in and he’s brimming with adolescent curiosity about everything.
Teenage spy Alex Rider arrives at Point Blanc and meets his fellow students, including his kindred spirit Kyra, played by Marli Siu.Sony Pictures Television
Farrant is excellent in the lead role. He’s obliged to play the brave hero, but emanate sensitivity and deep dismay at the cynicism around him. When he does get to that Point Blanc school he’s got to create an alter-ego for himself, making the role a triple layer of personae.
The eight-episode series is first-rate escapism that has some meat to it. Alex is often in peril and there are plenty of twists to propel the story. Visually sumptuous and clever, Alex Rider is sometimes funny, but with enough fear and loathing, and pity and terror to satisfy the espionage connoisseur.
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