Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Glória’ On Netflix, About a ‘60s Cold War Spy Ring Inside RARET’s Portuguese Headquarters

We’ve seen plenty of shows about Cold War spy craft, ranging from Sixties-set shows like Spy City to Eighties-set series like The Americans. But none of them have taken place at a radio station designed to rebroadcast propaganda from Western Europe into the communist East. Read on for more.

GLÓRIA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A bearded man rides in the back of a car on a rainy day. “1968. West Germany”.

The Gist: He is a Russian general who is traveling to the headquarters of Radio Free Europe to record a plea to Russian soldiers to not invade Czechoslovakia upon orders from the Soviets. As a car takes the tape reel to a new location, the car is hijacked by two masked men with guns. The courier hands the tape over.

Forty-eight hours earlier in Lisbon, João Vidal (Miguel Nunes), son of the Portuguese secretary of state, is about to leave the comforts of his parents’ estate for a new job out in the middle of nowhere, in a village called Glória do Ribatejo. He’s going to work for RARET, a secretive arm of Radio Free Europe that rebroadcasts the network’s programming to communist countries. He has one last night of car sex with Ursula (Carolina Amaral), a translator who often works for RARET.

When he gets to Glória he meets American boss James Wilson (Matt Rippy) and has dinner in town with his old college friend Goncalo (Afonso Pimentel), who is an engineer there. Engineers are busy at RARET, because they need to act when the Soviets find and jam the frequencies they use. At the dinner with Goncalo, João goes to buy razors off a truck but is really given a rendezvous point and the picture of a girl.

Yep, João is a spy for the KGB. His job is to be one of those men in the car who intercept the tape of the general more or less defecting. But the courier has already put the tape in the hand of a U.S. federal agent (Jimmy Taenaka); the tape that João has gotten just has music.

The backup plan is to have Urusla be called in to RARET to translate the tape before it goes out over the air. This way, he can pay her a “visit” in the studio where she’s doing the translating, and when she and Goncalo are distracted by some broken tubes (broken by João), he can swap the tapes.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Glória feels similar to the recent AMC+ series Spy City, though this takes place a few years later. But the spy craft and the idea that no one can trust anyone else is very much in that vein.

Our Take: Pedro Lopes, who created Glória, has done a good job of creating the world around João, in a setting that is a bit unusual for a spy series. Instead of the intrigue taking place around weapons or military matters, the intrigue is built around information and who has possession of it. By placing the show at RARET, we’re shown an aspect of the Cold War that existed back then, but people don’t know a whole lot about.

That’s the most intriguing part of the story. Without the setting, the show is a standard Cold War-era spy mystery, with people whom you don’t expect to be spies are working for one side or the other (or both). There’s the usual confusion of who is working for whom. But where João’s loyalties lie is pretty clear by the end of the first episode. And the fact that he has connections pretty high up in the Portuguese government works both to his advantage and disadvantage.

He just wants to lay low and be considered “another engineer.” He chafes when he’s put up at a ritzy villa at his mother’s request. There’s a reason why he wants to be relatively inconspicuous; any ostentatiousness brings attention. But his family brings him cover, too; surely the secretary of state’s son isn’t working for the Soviets… how could he be? He fought in the war! His loyalties are not questioned as readily due to his connections.

That is also what’s intriguing about the series; how did João get turned to the Soviets’ side? And what’s his motivation to go against the regime that employs his father? All of that, and the increasingly complex spy games, will drive the drama for the season, and we hope that the energy that the first episode exhibited continues.

Sex and Skin: João and Ursula have the aforementioned car sex. It’s less a relationship than João getting close to an asset so she could help him down the line.

Parting Shot: João is having a drink at the bar in the RARET complex when he sees the vision of the girl in his photo. Then she disappears.

Sleeper Star: It feels like Amaral’s character Ursula is going to be heavily involved in this story. But is she João’s dupe or does she know more than she lets on?

Most Pilot-y Line: None we could find.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Glória takes the standard Cold War spy drama and places it in a unique setting, which sets up some intriguing scenarios for missions to be executed and/or thwarted.

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Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Glória On Netflix