Michael Fassbender’s Underrated Spy Thriller Shoots to Success on Streaming

The Agency is a spy thriller starring Michael Fassbender as CIA operative Brandon “Martian” Colby. The first season aired on Paramount+ in 2024, with episodes coming out at a rate of one per week. The second season arrived on June 21, 2026, with all 10 episodes dropping at once.

Viewers are responding. According to Flix Patrol, The Agency is currently the fourth most-viewed show on Paramount+. That might not sound terribly impressive, but it’s up against some stiff competition. The number one spot is taken by Dutton Ranch, a hugely successful Yellowstone sequel show that only wrapped up its first season on July 3, 2026. The number two spot goes to Yellowstone itself, proving that Taylor Sheridan’s modern western drama has incredible staying power. Then comes South Park, which has nearly 30 seasons of content to enjoy. With a back catalog like that, it will probably never leave the top 10.

The Agency proves that a newer series which isn’t part of a huge ongoing franchise can still make its mark. The Agency is even ahead of a couple of other shows from the expanded Taylor Sheridan universe, including Tulsa King and Marshals, which occupy the fifth and sixth place spots, respectively.

Michael Fassbender does some of his best work in The Agency, playing a man who’s barely keeping it together as he negotiates betrayals, double crosses, and the strain of living under assumed identities. In the second season, Martian is forced into spying on the CIA by an MI6 agent named James Richardson (Hugh Bonneville), who himself is revealed to be a mole working for another organization. Martian goes along with the plan in order to free Dr. Samia Fatima (Jodie Turner-Smith), a Sudanese anthropology professor he fell in love with in Season 1, when he was living under the identity of “Paul Lewis.” She is eventually freed by her captors, but her family is still under threat and the trauma of the experience has changed her.

Meanwhile, The Agency Season 2 featured a lot more of Daniela ‘Danny’ Ruiz Morata (Saura Lightfoot-Leon), a newer CIA agent going undercover in Iran. And there was a new villain introduced in the form of Vernon “Viking” Crawford (Clayne Crawford), a former Marine who’s now a major player in a Russian-backed mercenary organization called Valhalla. There are a lot of balls up in the air ahead of a potential Season 3. Paramount has not officially renewed The Agency, but it’s based on a French series called The Bureau that ran for five seasons. Hopefully, The Agency will get to run at least that long.

The Agency also stars Jeffrey Wright as Martian’s boss, Henry Ogletree, and Richard Gere as James Bradley, the CIA London Station Chief. The show is a star-studded affair. The first two seasons are available to stream now on Paramount+.