Season 4 – Le bureau des légendes

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Stephen G @RT76499974 03/26/2021 The series gets even better...something I'd not thought possible. As with the other seasons, there's lots to figure out about what's going on, but that intrigue is part of the power of the show. And eventually, it all becomes clear. An incredible final episode to cap the season. The only series to which I've given a full five stars here at RT. See more 11/21/2020 Great series. It's interesting to see how French Intelligence DGSE deals with real issues in today's world. See more 11/18/2020 Just the best tv for quite some time. Thought provoking, intelligent, compelling narrative, and never overblown. A must. See more 07/10/2020 Any discussion of streaming shows in lockdown has to start with The Bureau – absolutely the best spy-intelligence series ever. I'm writing from Melbourne, Victoria in Australia, which has just gone into second wave lockdown for up to 6 weeks in July 2020. I'm writing having just seen series 5 episode 7, having invested 57 hours or so so far, with 3 eps to go and then to wait for a hoped for series 6. The Bureau is so good I'm smiling and shaking my head in respect. It's a spy series: the best I've ever seen. It's at the very least the equal of Le Carre's George Smiley series based on his books, and reminds me very much of the Sandbaggers and Callan, two series helmed by former intelligence pros. (More cerebral and tradecraft than any of those including Spooks (MI5 in USA) another all-time favorite. And unlike Le Carre's books which were the plotline for the Smiley series here it's completely the invention of showrunner Eric Rochant and team: that is, it's original. it's influenced by French DGSE experiences and gossip as well as the plotting of Rochant and his writing team (great article in Variety, March 31, 2020). https://variety.com/2020/tv/global/the-bureau-showrunner-eric-rochant-showrunning-covid-inspiration-1203549865/S5E3. And Rochant even appears in s5e3-6 in a small role briefing a French agent in Phnom Penh. The action (if you're talking about bang-bang shoot-em-up or blow-em-up or cut-em-up) is doled out sparingly. But the intellectual action, the game of cat and computer mouse is magnificent, played over the globe (in this series and indeed in this one episode Paris, Moskva, Phnom Penh, Cairo, Sinai Peninsula) and takes your breath away. There are 4 significant plots arcing and intersecting and overlapping and knotting into one another. The A plot of the French agent who made a big operational mistake 5 series ago continues to drive the action, with all the other plots interweaving and tangling with that. The fine grain of the plotting messes with the brain of the viewer: it's truly mesmerizing and addictive. If you take your eyes off the screen for 2 seconds you miss major plot potential developments. I can't believe how the last few seconds of S5E3 cause you to turn over events of the last 3 series over in your mind - talk about late-breaking genius .... The acting is superbe. The intensity is magnified by the expressions of the actors/agents, trained to suppress emotions. I remember (series 2) a senior officer training a junior to not betray emotion as that's for amateurs and seeing the junior dial down her facial expressions. The show is full of magnificent tradecraft, about shadowing, avoiding shadows, avoiding being hurt when roughed up ... S5 expands on the magnificent display of spying tools including facial recognition on a global scale, IT disinformation, AI and the high tech world of interest to us geeks. Magnificent. You owe it to yourself to watch it. A NYT reviewer rated it in December 2019 as the 3rd best non-US series he'd ever seen but that was before series 5 which I think has lifted its rating. See more 05/17/2020 Don't get me wrong. Le Bureau, season 4 is not bad. It's just nowhere near the quality of seasons 1-3 (that I gave 4 to 5 stars each). Watching season 4 without seeing the previous seasons would be probably fine, but knowing what happened before and knowing the main characters season 4 was full of unlikely events and non-sense dialogue. Just like all the main characters suddenly lost their memory. Plus the problem with the head of internal security basically running all the field operations by telling the managers what to do next. Not very credible. Luckily JJA wasn't effective enough to ruin the parts where Jonas was hunting the terrorists. Jonas and Jean-Paul were the only reason I finished also season 4. I'll give them 5 stars, resulting 1 star in average for season 4. I wonder if one of the original writers left the team after seasons 1-3 that were so brilliant? See more 12/19/2019 A brilliant spy series from France. Great cast and amazing story. See more Read all reviews

Le bureau des légendes — Season 4

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