Spy City

Fielding Scott is a terrific character, the writing is crisp and intelligent, and it’s a very welcome addition to a genre that has been beset, recently, with a series of duds.

Though the Via Mala allusion is clever, the better stylistic reference for Spy City would be the early novels of John le Carré and the films based on the themes: bitter, cynical accounts of how intelligence agencies go off the rails and wage private little wars among themselves, fraught with collateral damage, using the Cold War as an excuse to settle old scores even if they scuttle the supposed larger issues.

Smart and stylish. ... The mid-section of the season drags a bit when it feels like “Spy City” has a few too many characters and subplots around episode three, but it recovers nicely about halfway through Episode 4 and then barrels through to an ending that answers most of the questions of the season while finding an elegiac note to hit at the same time.

There are subplots à go-go. ... The man she kills isn’t that Nazi. And the one she’s chasing may not exist. She seems awfully young to have been widowed in the ’40s. Maybe she never had a husband at all. Alternatively, everyone might be telling the truth, which is what makes “Spy City” as engrossing as it is.

We’re intrigued by the time period depicted in Spy City, simply because it’s a part of that period in East-West relations that has been under-documented, at least for people who aren’t huge Cold War history buffs. It helps that the acting and production design are both excellent.

“Spy City” is sometimes entertaining and often well-acted, but the missteps of its finale call into question its overall intentions.

A monotonously twisty — or twistily monotonous? — assemblage of espionage clichés and paper-thin characters wafting through a potent historical backdrop.