This is the best spy series I have seen.
And believe me I have seen many. But the Bureau or the original title Le Bureau des Legends as the series are French beat other spy series by far. And apparently, I am not the only one who thinks the series are fantastic. The Bureau has been sold to more than 100 countries which is quite good for a French series. Especially when there are plenty of other languages represented in the series besides French e.g., Arabic, Russian and Farsi.
The Bureau is based on true stories from former French spies. These stories have been put into a contemporary context. We follow the daily life and routine of agents and their missions in France’s Directorate-General for External Security (the Bureau). The Bureau is responsible for education, training and taking care of undercover agents on long term missions abroad. Especially in North Africa and the Middle East. These French agents live under false identities for years during which their mission is to identify and recruit talented and reliable intelligence informants.
The Bureau began season 1 in 2015 and ended season 5 in 2020. The plot is briefly that after having worked as an undercover agent in Syria for 6 years the intelligence officer Guillaume Dabailly (code name Malotru) returns to DGSE in Paris. He is now fighting to forget the time he spent i Damascus where he officially worked as a French literature teacher while working as a spy. During his stay in Damascus, he fell in love with a Syrian woman Nadia and at home in Paris he is now suffering from a broken heart.
In Paris Malotru is given the task to train a new agent and help investigating what happened to an agent who has gone missing in Algeria. After 6 years in Syria, he tries to reconnect with his teenage daughter, colleagues, and his old former self. This is hard as he also finds out that Nadia is now in Paris. Nadia doesn’t know that Malotru was a spy in Damascus. She still believes that he was a literature teacher.
Season 2 continues with the same themes but also focuses on another character from season 1 Marina Loiseau. She is going on a mission to Tehran working as an undercover specialist in seismology in order to gather intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program. In Paris Guillaume has been promoted to deputy director but he also becomes an agent for the CIA. And now things really start takin off, and I won’t reveal anymore. But never have I been so absorbed as I was by the Bureau. Never.
The realistic set up is what makes the Bureau different and something special. There are the usual explosions and gun shots but most of the time the series embrace the ugly and often boring environment of reality’s espionage. It could be a stressed up and poorly dressed informant who spends hours surveilling a GSP-location on a source’s phone. A training team who drinks a new agent drunk and during interrogations tries to force her to blow her cover. Examples like these are vital in creating the complex, realistic and true identities, and situations. When the writer of the series Eric Rochant showed the first two episodes to 300 DGSE employees he was met with standing ovations. That’s how trustworthy the series are. Superbe extraordinaire.
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