Review: 'Counterpart'

John Thomas

Created by Justin Marks

The two men sit at opposite sides of a metal table bolted to the floor in a subterranean interrogation room in Berlin. They look exactly alike but live in very different circumstances.

Howard Silk Alpha (J. K. Simmons) and Howard Silk Prime (J. K. Simmons) both live in Berlin but in different universes. At the end of the cold war a German scientist accidentally created two parallel universes. Berlin copied itself.

The scientist named the two Berlins Alpha and Prime – now home to the two Howard Silks. The Silks aren’t the only persons to have been duplicated – everyone in Alpha has an exact copy in Prime.

Limited highly restricted passage is possible between Alpha and Prime through an underground passage below a United Nations building. Moving in either direction, citizens must provide reasons for travel, a government ID, have their photos taken and cross back within specified times.

 In spite of these limitations, spies, saboteurs and terrorists freely move back and forth. Directors of both Berlins make full use of this passage to collect secrets and information.

In the mid 90s a devastating flu struck Prime claiming the lives of a half billion of its residents. Blame for the attack fell on the leaders of Alpha adding to the already shaky diplomatic relations between the two. Prime wants reparation.

One of their more far-reaching plots is to create a school where orphans and other children surviving the flu attack are trained to become replacements for their duplicates in Alpha. The principal goal of the Directorate is to topple Alpha through any means possible – violent or otherwise.

The director of Alpha, Roland Fancher (Richard Schiff), appoints his son-in-law Peter Quayle (Harry Lloyd) as his assistant with his main duty to discover what interventions the other side is planning. After consulting with his wife Clara (Vazanin Boniadi) and her father, he decides the best way to find the truth is to trade the docile, Prime Silk from the other side with their own, more aggressive Alpha Silk.

The two Silks meet in a secret location and reluctantly agree to the exchange. Adding to the Silks’ challenge is their having two very different wives to contend with – the Prime wife lies in a coma, while the Alpha wife is a prominent law enforcement agent.

Meantime in Alpha, in addition to discovering a special school, it is revealed that the Prime Directorate has a deeply hidden mole who has been forwarding data from Alpha to Prime; this is only known to those with highest security clearance in Alpha. Eventually the identity of the mole is narrowed to a few suspects and then down to one.

Peter finally confronts the mole who, under great duress, confesses to the heinous crime of transferring data to the other side. Now Peter must decide if he should shatter his own life and the future of his family by revealing his findings or keep the name of the mole a secret.

The highly creative presentation and duplicity of this “see” Starz series makes this a mind challenger.

johan@beachomber.news

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