HBO’s The Sympathizer enters the television lineup with two strikes against it. In the first place, the limited series’s 2015 source novel, by Viet Thanh Nguyen, was among the worst Pulitzer Prize winners in recent memory, a geopolitical navel-gazer that “thrilled” flattering book critics’ voguish anti-Westernism. In the second, the show’s conceit has already been tried. Viewers interested in the stateside machinations of Vietnamese spies need merely watch the superb fifth season of FX’s The Americans. 

Of course, HBO’s latest has its own noteworthy qualities, chief among them a certain gonzo charm and compelling work by Robert Downey Jr., an actor fast approaching national treasure status. Watching the series, however, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that something has gone wrong. A work of political complaint, The Sympathizer lacks both an understanding of the moment and a sense of proportion. Whatever one thinks of its ideas, one would be hard-pressed to argue that they land.