Review: Donald Glover's 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith' is so weird you'll either love it or hate it

You can't really be surprised when you get exactly what you signed up for.

Donald Glover, creator of FX's "Atlanta" and Amazon's "Swarm," doesn't make standard TV shows. He goes for the weird, the experimental, the philosophical and sometimes horrific. So when the actor/writer/producer was tapped to create a "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" TV series for Amazon, I shouldn't have expected anything like the 2005 Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie movie, the 1996 Scott Bakula and Maria Bello TV series, or the 1941 Alfred Hitchcock film. And yet somehow I was still surprised by how odd Glover's take on the married-spies tale ended up.

"Smith" (streaming now, ★★ out of four) tells the story of two spies for some unknown private entity who are slapped together in a fake marriage that starts to turn truly romantic (in the Brangelina film, the couple is employed by rival spy agencies and sent to kill each other).

Created by Glover and his "Atlanta" co-producer Francesca Sloane, and with the headline couple played by Glover and Maya Erskine ("PEN15"), "Smith" is a spy show that doesn't often feel like it's in that usually high-octane genre.

The series has far more bland conversations than tense action sequences, more awkward banter than witty repartee and more staid dinner parties than dastardly criminal deeds. It is exactly what, say, "Atlanta" might be like if there were a few secret agents thrown into the mix. Glover is nothing but himself, and he has a distinctive, naturalistic, understated style. If you're looking for the glamorous high jinks of a James Bond caper, this is not the show for you. Nor would Brad and Angelina fit into this world.

But Glover and Erskine do, in their own awkward way. "Smith" is unlikely to generate anything but strong reactions. You'll either love this vérité take on the espionage drama or you will absolutely hate it. It works − some of the time. There is charm to the weirdness. But at other points the stripped-down story verges on boring. And for me, the dull outweighed the interestingly quirky.

John (Glover) and Jane Smith (Erskine) are meandering millennials who trade their old lives and identities for high salaries and high-risk missions, working for a secretive corporation that gives them unexplained tasks and communicates only through instant messaging. Paired as a fake married couple, the strangers at first actively eschew any romantic or sexual tension. But after the adrenaline rush of a mission or two, they fall into bed together, and into some more normal married-couple tics (it doesn't take long for the bickering to start, for instance).

Each episode finds the pair on a different mission for their anonymous benefactor, as the threat of unknown punishment for failure looms large. There is a shockingly good guest cast for each case of the week, including Alexander Skarsgård, Sarah Paulson, Sharon Horgan, Ron Perlman, Paul Dano, Michaela Coel, John Turturro and Parker Posey. They're all nice to see but seem equally confused to be there. Occasionally, John and Jane run into other John and Jane Smiths, who help unravel the mystery of their employer. But the cases are the afterthoughts of each episode: The meat of the story is the relationship between them, and all their mundanities and eccentricities.

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Erskine and Glover are a delight anywhere, but they have to work too hard to create chemistry. When part of the premise of the series is that the main couple can't keep their hands off each other, it shouldn't be so difficult for the viewers to see the spark between them. Yet Erskine and Glover always seem more like great pals than great lovers, even during sex scenes.

As for the overall tone and mood of the series, it isn't to my taste and will likely be a hard sell for many. I can see what Glover was trying to do: Subvert expectations and make a series about marriage that also happens to have spies. It could have been profound, but it just doesn't gel into something cohesive. "Smith" was originally meant to be a collaboration between Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge ("Fleabag" and "Indiana Jones 5"). Bridge departed due to creative differences, and this is one of the only times I believe that the phrase isn't a euphemism for some deeper conflict. Maybe they would have had more chemistry, but Bridge's style and humor are brash and obvious, and Glover clearly wanted a more intimate, stranger vibe.

He certainly achieved strange. And that probably wasn't for the best.

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