The Cold War sci-fi drama that’s harder to explain than watch

Counterpart ★★★★
7plus, Wednesday

Before he co-created Shogun, one of this year’s best new series, American writer and producer Justin Marks was responsible for this labyrinthine science-fiction thriller. Debuting in 2017 and running for a pair of knotty seasons, Counterpart was a John le Carre fever dream: a coolly calculated espionage tale, set in Berlin, where the adversarial sides are two parallel worlds linked by a single crossing. It is, you’ll come to realise, a cruel proposition, and the basis for what remains a hidden gem of a show.

J. K. Simmons works at a highly secretive UN department in Counterpart.Credit:

How does it work? The audience learns alongside Howard Silk (J.K. Simmons), a minor bureaucrat at a United Nations department – the Office of Interchange, so secretive that he has no idea what it really does. That changes when Howard’s superiors take him into a conference room and essentially detonate his sense of reality. In 1987, an experiment by East German scientists went amiss, creating a mirror copy of our world, fused together in their basement laboratory. The two worlds, the original Alpha and the additional Prime, have since evolved separately but in wary proximity.

Their evidence is Howard’s doppelganger (Simmons again), who has taken a very different career path over the past 30 years. Alpha Howard has been filing reports, but Prime Howard has thrived as an intelligence operative. Sitting opposite his bewildered double, Prime Howard explains he has crossed over to help stop an assassination campaign put in place by a rogue Prime faction aiming to damage Prime. On the hit list, for reasons he doesn’t disclose, is Alpha Howard’s wife, Emily (Olivia Williams).

It’s harder to explain than to watch. On screen the symmetry of the camera compositions and the expert skills of the cast provide a natural delineation. Alpha Howard is a dutiful public servant, but Prime Howard is a ruthless spy, and their personalities make the division clear. Their interactions, as with the numerous other pairings that possibly haunt key characters in Alpha, are a psychological stress test. Can you really lie to yourself? And is that the worst kind of betrayal?

This is a long way from Shogun’s feudal Japan, but both shows make great use of newcomers to a world learning on the fly. In Counterpart, the buildings and the people look the same but once the whirring plot starts to show us Prime, which even in Berlin has a stillness that is otherworldly compared with Alpha’s urban bustle, three decades of divergence lead to intriguing possibilities. The narrative has espionage lingo and sharp bursts of action, but the underlying tone has a metaphysical hum.

Complications remain, which are definitely more intrusive in the second season, but the concept translates because it’s consistently applied in an intimate setting. The Howards don’t just see each other, they see the alternates of people they love, or did love. The temptation to make amends, or start anew, is palpable. Sometimes the fascination is self-destructive: the cold-blooded assassin from Prime that has covertly entered Alpha, Baldwin (Sara Serraiocco), can’t resist searching for herself.

Counterpart does what good science-fiction should: it uses speculation to make us look anew at our own world. Our predilection as a society for othering comes into sharp focus on the show when those being vilified are literally versions of ourselves. The cast, which includes Harry Lloyd (Game of Thrones) and Ulrich Thomsen (Banshee), sells every twist and double-cross with exemplary self-possession. That dissenting voice in your head? Now it’s standing opposite you.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.