Is it necessary to know everything about your spouse? On NBC’s Undercovers, a married couple who happened to be spies knew nothing about their professional pasts had to work together for their former boss: the CIA.
Undercovers followed Steven (Boris Kodjoe) and Samantha Bloom (Gugu Mbatha Raw) as retired married CIA spies turned caterers. They were content living their marriage free of international intrigue, until they got an offer from CIA boss Carter Shaw (Gerald McRaney) to return. The Blooms were hesitant due to being out of the field for five years, but they eventually accepted. They had CIA field agent Bill Hoyt (Ben Schwartz) to help them when he wasn’t fawning over Mr. Bloom’s CIA prowess. Unfortunately, the Blooms had suffered some complications from Samantha’s sister Lizzie (Mekia Cox) as they kept secrets from her and from their CIA friend Leo (Carter MacIntyre) who knew professional secrets about both of the Blooms. Will Leo push the Blooms to break their professional pact once and for all? Do Shaw and the CIA have an ulterior motive for bringing the Blooms out of retirement?
Sadly, the biggest question should be whether Undercovers will be on the air long enough for the audience to find out. The show’s main competitor was the long established Survivor with a built in following that had decimated rival shows in the past. Luckily, the spy drama gave its audience enough of a diversion for viewers not interested in reality television. The paper thin spy plots have grown increasingly complicated as each mission delved unexpectedly further into the couple’s spy pasts. Undercovers had so far mainly excelled on the strong chemistry between Kodjoe and Mbatha Raw who made the audience believe they were truly married. They finished each other’s sentences and made each other laugh. The show’s main flaws were that everyone else seemed too familiar, especially the spy figures that came in and out of the Blooms’ life. The only exception was that McRaney made his cantankerous CIA boss a laugh riot simply in how he scowled at the Blooms. There should be more of him and less of a few of the other supporting characters.
Undercovers premiered on September 22th and airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on NBC.
Verdict: Two leads with believable chemistry hindered by easily solved storylines.
TV Score: 3 out of 5 stars
Score Chart
1 Star (Mediocre)
2 Stars (Averagely Entertaining)
3 Stars (Decent Enough to Pass Muster)
4 Stars (Near Perfect)
5 Stars (Gold Standard)
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