Le Bureau des Légendes

When you know about the quality of the cast, the track record of the director/creator, and that the French intelligence services and former spooks contributed to the scenario, expectations run high for this series.

When you realise that it is embedded in reality and about the work of intelligence services, namely gathering and analysing information, for which the tools are brains, psychology, assets, emotions, manipulation, trading, disinformation, treachery, cyber war-fare, and other skillsets, that it's not glamorous, and that it's far less about big weapons than being able to put 2 and 2 together and making sense of constantly shifting sands and highly fluid situations, based upon which political and military decisions are made, then you know that you are onto a treat.

And, what a treat! Suspence, twists and turns, moving parts that don't always come together; all of this and plenty more are delivered, and keep you on the edge of your seat.

This is not James Bond or Jason Bourne, far from it. This is about the fastidious and ungrateful, yet highly dangerous and stressful jobs of those people evolving in the murky waters of the intelligence world. Not all saints, not all sinners, often both, and always faced with difficult decisions and their ensuing consequences, not the least guilt and sadness.

And, because intelligence officers and agents remain human after all, portraying their emotions and vulnerabilities so vividly by digging deep into their characters makes this series as real and raw as it gets.

P.S.: Watching it in its original version with subtitles in your language will take you one step closer to the action.

As an avid watcher of films and TV series, I've been on IMDb for quite a while, but I've never written a review, even though I casually read reviews from other users. However, this is the first time I feel I need to urge everyone reading this to watch this TV series.

There are loads and loads of TV series about different fields of the intelligence sector, but few of them succeed in being as smart as the agencies they are trying to depict. With Le Bureau des Légendes, it's the other way around. As a viewer, you are constantly being left to guess what everyone's next move is, knowing only little or nothing at all, just like intelligence work in real life.

Agents constantly have to think at least three or four steps ahead and even if you succeed with your first move, there is no guarantee at all that the remaining moves will be successful. As all those actions are being taken on risk assumptions, it makes the series a gripping ride and makes you constantly feel like you're on the edge. The writers, actors and camera men pull this off brilliantly, much thanks to the outstanding writing which makes every single TV episode feel like a miniature movie. If you do some research about how the show was made, you'll notice that part of the production got never before authorized access (even though limited) to real life DGSE, which really shows off.

However, it's not only down to the writing, but to the acting and filming as well. The casting crew has done an amazing job. You can feel the chemistry between the actors and especially from Mathieu Kassovitz and Jean-Pierre Darroussin who bless us with amazing performances.

I don't want to make this review into a TL;DR piece, so I will shortly summarize by saying that Le Bureau des Légendes is one of the most intelligent, tense, gripping and brilliantly acted espionage dramas I've ever seen. The series, which just gets better with every season, is among the best TV ever produced. If you're reading this and you haven't decided if you'll watch it or not - don't wait, as it'll not wait for you.

This is the best TV show I have seen to date. My friend from China email me and told me to check out Le Bureau. I had to subscribe to Sundance to start watching season 1. I was hooked and it just kept getting better and better.

I love watching British Spy series, but this French series is the best one I have ever seen. Even with my slow reading the subtitle. I know it has a disclaimer at the beginning of each show but this TV series is so believable it is scary.

This series, the second season especially, seems almost perfectly made. It is much in little in every scene, and it makes haste slowly. Intellectually and emotionally satisfying, the writing, the acting, and the filming rarely make a false move. Rarely, because the scenes of the prime spy's writing alone, shirtless, at his desk, in voice-over, strike me as unnecessary, and the American CIA chief, who was so good in "Friday Night Lights," is made to play here as if he were an Anglophile precisian: it doesn't come off. The immediate superior of the main spy plays his part brilliantly, and there isn't a weak actor in the French cast and Middle Eastern cast. So many details are funny and telling at the same time, and yet never detract from the wide scope and long narrative of the series. Nor does the Syrian connection, seeming to come right out of the headlines or even ahead of them, hurt. This is yet another series that makes so many feature films seem a waste of time and money.

The reviews I've read here about Canal+'s 'Le Bureau Des Legendes' seem to cover it. I'd only add that its more nuanced non-sensationalist approach works better than many similar political-spy dramas I've seen recently. The apparently ordinary people working out of an office go about their everyday lives as extraordinary events unfold around them. Eric Rochant's series builds the tension gradually, which gives the big 'moments' greater impact. And at the heart of things is a beautiful love story, of course! Don't know how accurate 'Le Bureau' is as regards DGSE and the French intelligence network it portrays, but found it credible and gripping as a series. Still can't find it in myself to award it a '10' (think it would have to be in my native English so I could follow all the verbal stuff to do that), but I'm certainly looking forward to more of 'Le Bureau Des Legendes' (they're making a 4th season, right?).