‘Counterpart’ Review: A Dazzling Sci-Fi Thriller That Is As Fun As It Is Smart

I went into Counterpart with very specific expectations, and to my great delight, Counterpart refused to conform to them. It is, not as I worried, a self-serious and bloated European Ray Donovan. It is a devilishly delightful caper, clever and addictive. As emotionally mature as it is meticulous in design, Counterpart is the rare thriller that marks a tremendous step forward in the overdone sci-fi “puzzle box” genre. Counterpart is good. Not just that, Counterpart is sinisterly smart. Like a good chess player, it predicts the audience’s questions and answers them with revelations that only deepen your interest in what’s going to happen next.

Conceptually, there’s nothing aggressively new here. The show takes opens in contemporary Berlin. Academy Award winner J.K. Simmons plays a meek U.N. employee assigned to a top secret project. His character, Howard Silk, is so low on the totem pole that his superior, a delightfully odious Harry Lloyd (aka Game of Thrones‘s ill-fated Viserys Targaryen), scoffs at the idea of ever giving the older man a meaningful promotion. But fate, as it often does in these tales, has other plans. As it turns out, Berlin sits atop a passageway between alternate universes. Since Cold War scientists broke through the barrier a few decades past, the two parallel worlds have veered further and further away from one another. This means that everyone has an “other” — aka a counterpart (get it?) on the other side. Howard gets to meet his, a tough, confident, darkly sardonic power player who wants to pull the lowlier Howard into his war games.

Counterpart takes its cues from the well-worn genres of cold-war spy thrillers and mirror universe deep dives. But what sets the Starz show apart is how well constructed its world is. J.J. Abrams arguably popularized the “puzzle box” style of show with fare like Alias, Lost, and Fringe. Hugely influential, these shows hooked the audience with action and mystery, but often lost their footing as their complex narratives spiraled out of control. (YEAH, I SAID IT. THESE SHOWS SPUN OUT LIKE A TRACTOR TRAILER ON BLACK ICE.) So far, Counterpart seems to have side-stepped this problem. At least, half-way through the season, the show seems as confident as ever in its approach to a mirror universe-propelled spy thriller where the audience knows next to nothing. Two things anchor Counterpart: exceptional performances and exceptional plotting.

Counterpart is led by J.K. Simmons, giving us a masterclass in physical nuance. Howard and his counterpart, “Howard Prime,” aren’t distinguished by campy physical differences, but by microscopic differences in posture, expression, and emotional energy. It’s such a great dual performance that you’re never in doubt as to which Howard is which. But Counterpart is an ensemble show. The cast assembled features the luminous Olivia Williams (who, spoiler alert, will get more to do than lie in a coma), a sublimely vampy Nazanin Boniadi, and a number of splashy guest turns from folks like Kenneth Choi, Stephen Rae, Lotte Verbeek, and Richard Schiff.

Plot-wise, the show owes, well, everything to its writer and creator Justin Marks. Counterpart is Marks’ first foray into television writing, and it seems that he approached the work like a writer would a novel. Starz let him finish all ten episodes of the first season before shooting the pilot. This preparation shows in the finished product. Tiny details in episode one come into stark focus later on and (so far) no loose thread is left dangling.

Most of all, Counterpart is fun. Sometimes “good” TV can feel like an emotional drudge. Counterpart peppers its slow burn emotional drama with riotous spurts of action, much of it thanks to the show’s breakout performer, Sara Serraiocco. The Italian indie darling plays Baldwin, a hyper-lethal assassin from “the other side” whose sad eyes manage to hook into you like a Sarah McLachlan-soundtracked animal shelter ad. She’s good. She’s sexy. She’s dangerous. She’s tragic, and yet, fun. Yes, Counterpart‘s biggest boon is that it remembers the cardinal rule of spy thrillers: the audience is tuning in to be thrilled. Counterpart offers amusement park-level thrills with highbrow flair.

Counterpart premieres Sunday, January 21 at 8pm ET/PT on Starz, and the first episode is available to watch now for subscribers on the Starz app.

Where to Stream Counterpart