Stakes on a train

• Published date: 25 April 2023
• Publication title: Signal

I’VE always wondered what would happen to me if a blacked-out SUV screeched up and someone yelled: “Get in — now! No time to explain!” I know I would be annoying. I know my actions would ruin everyone else in the car’s day. “No explanation? At all? Come on. A hint? Come on!”

Two armed guards in leather bomber jackets bundle me into the back seat and floor it, but it’s around 2.30pm and I realise I’ve not eaten lunch. “Guys, how long’s this drive going to be?” Everyone’s mad at me because the spy agency they work for has a sprawling base across a countryside mansion and that’s a four-hour drive out of town, and they all had lunch at 1pm like normal people, so everyone’s furious when I make them pull over in a service station so I can get a claggy egg mayo baguette. My phone was on like 11% battery when I got bundled into the car, and even though I can sense a very tense atmosphere I really do have to charge it before it turns itself off, but all the guards have iPhones when I need an Android charger and it’s a whole other thing. Eventually, obviously, they put a matte black bag over my head and shoot me in the skull. Someone else can help with this whole thing.

That, I suppose, is why I am not in Citadel (out Friday), the new Prime Video thriller series from David Weil (creator of anti-Nazi vigilante drama Hunters) and executive produced by the Russo brothers (Arrested Development, Community, and every mega-grossing MCU movie ever made). They went with Richard Madden for the main role, instead, as the phenomenally irritatingly named Mason Kane, who smartmouths his way around, opposite the far more composed Priyanka Chopra Jonas as Nadia Sinh. I’m just checking the spoilers list as to what I can actually say about the series, and ... ah. I think I can say they are spies? I think that’s OK. And the agency they are spying for is called Citadel. And the thing with Citadel is, well, it fell. And eight years later — without anyone involved even ageing one single day — they have to reunite and ... well, I don’t really know what they’re up to, and I’ve seen half of the six-episode series. But what definitely happens is people keep saying “Citadel” a lot.

Whether you enjoy Citadel or not is going to depend on your ability to suspend disbelief, but also on your own personal threshold for the modern language of action movie banter. The series starts on a train (nothing like an action film...