Count The Parts

I caught the new drama on Starz, Counterpart.  It's about Howard Silk, who's been working in Germany at a mysterious UN bureaucracy for 30 years. His job seems to consist of meeting some other guy in a room and exchanging information through official code.

He figures it's time for a promotion, but his young boss makes it clear he's a drone who's not going to advance.  Then something happens, which involves spoilers so I'll tell you in the next paragraph.

Our hero is called into a special meeting with higher-ups.  It turns out his counterpart--a guy who looks just like him but lives in a parallel world--is coming into Silk's world to do some work, since there's been others crossing over.  Apparently, three decades ago this parallel world was discovered on the site and the agency is there to deal with it.  The two worlds were the same at first, but have since been diverging.  It's worth noting that Howard Silk Prime is a cool guy who's advanced pretty far in his job.

The lead is J. K. Simmons, who as an actor was all but unknown up till his mid-40s. In the last twenty years or so, however, he's been making up for lost time.  He now does several films every year as well as TV series.

He brings a certain authority to any role, and seems to be the right guy to play Silk.  Other actors include Olivia Williams and Harry Lloyd from Game Of Thrones.  There promises to be plenty of clashes in future episodes, along with a thickening plot.  I suppose I'll stick around a little longer to see where it goes.