When it comes to streaming entertainment, I love a quality spy drama more than almost anything else — so much so, for example, that when I finished bingeing FX’s criminally underrated espionage thriller The Old Man, I was in no way ready to let it go. So I immediately went out and devoured the novel that the show is based on (2017’s The Old Man, by Thomas Perry).
And on a related note: I’m on cloud nine today, given that FX has just shared a teaser trailer for the second season of The Old Man, in which Jeff Bridges as the show’s central spy can be seen brandishing a long gun and looking as badass as ever. Oh, and the network also revealed when the first two episodes of Season 2 will drop: On Sept. 12.
The Old Man (which you can also stream via FX on Hulu) is, in my humble opinion, part of a string of must-watch FX series that also include Shogun, The Bear, and Fargo, all of which have combined to make FX start to feel like — dare I say it? — the new HBO. Yes, yes, I know we’ve still got things like House of the Dragon on HBO, but that’s a prequel connected to an existing series. Whereas FX keeps knocking it out of the park with one home run after another, a trend that shows no sign of stopping.
For those who haven’t tried it yet, The Old Man stars Bridges as Dan Chase — a wily and now old former CIA operative who’s been in hiding for years as a result of a mission gone wrong. An assassin flushes him out and forces him to go on the run, which turns The Old Man into, more or less, Chasing The Old Man.
The cast of The Old Man also includes Jonathan Lithgow as FBI official Harold Harper, and while I don’t want to say too much about his character for those of you who haven’t tried the show yet, let me just say this: The scenes between Lithgow and Bridges are absolute gold. And here’s just one example of what I’m talking about. This, in fact, is the scene from Season 1, Episode 1, that locked me into the show — in this scene, Harper delivers a warning to Chase, and the interplay between the two characters is pretty spellbinding:
In Season 2, FX explains, Chase and Harper “set off on their most important mission to date — to recover “Emily Chase” (Alia Shawkat) after she is kidnapped by “Faraz Hamzad” (Navid Negahban), a powerful Afghan tribal leader. With all three men claiming her as their daughter, Emily finds herself in an identity crisis that has dire implications.”
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