toadyblegh

Watching this dreary espionage thriller, it was increasingly obvious that Kiera Knightley should thank her lucky stars that she's so photogenic because she cannot act for toffee. Wooden doesn't quite capture it, her face is a rigid mess contorted into weird facsimile of feeling that she just cannot conjure - she looks like somebody suffering from terrible constipation straining on the toilet. Her dire "performance" isn't helped by the terrible Christmas music that blares throughout, strange dramatic pacing and tiresome dialogue. The use of dramatic music to inject tension into scenes that nobody with a pulse could care about is incredibly irritating - they practically play the jaws scene every time constipated girl moves through space, even if she's just opening a box. It makes it very hard to care about any of it.

The Agency has an amazing cast and it's possible that it may eventually gather steam and develop tension but that first episode is unbearably dreary, slow and tedious.

The cinematography is undeniably gorgeous but everything is cast in drab colours, from wet cities to offices, characterless apartments and soulless restaurants. The dialogue is extraordinarily banal, the characters so uninteresting that you would dread meeting them if they weren't so damned photogenic.

It's almost as if the director is deliberately trying to lull the audience into a false sense of security but it is genuinely hard to remain awake through what is a long, painful hour full of dark hints but devoid of interest, emotional hooks or any kind of story. Perhaps there is a jump scare coming, somewhere down the line but I am just not prepared to hang on for another painful episode or four to find out whether there is an interesting story to go with the ludicrous cast. Somebody should have told the producers that there is a lot of content out there and if you don't hook people from the start they're probably not going to watch yours.

There's very little to like about this opening episode of the latest Dune spin-off. The acting is terrible, with weak reedy voices struggling to be heard over a dreary, repetitive soundtrack.

The script drags, the dialogue is weak, the lighting is grey and miserable, the sets poor. It's possible that the series may improve but getting through the first chapter of it is a painful chore, one that I regret undertaking.

There's also something strangely amateurish about the production. In an age of amazing CGI, it somehow looks like it was filmed blurrily in a British council estate.

It's an hour and five minutes of my life I am not getting back. I would urge anybody to spare themselves the pain of it.