Secret Invasion fixes the fatal flaw of Marvel TV series – but only for a minute

There are flashes of genuine substance in Disney+’s supernatural spy drama, but only flashes, writes Louis Chilton. It’s no wonder people are losing interest fast

Samuel L Jackson in Marvel’s ‘Secret Invasion’ (Disney)

Early on in episode two of Marvel’s Secret Invasion, counterintelligence agent Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) and his alien sidekick Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) have a conversation on a train. Both Jackson and Mendelsohn are formidable actors, if the material’s good – and here, it seems like it might be. Fury starts monologuing, relaying a simple allegorical anecdote about his youth in segregated Alabama. The speech is nothing profound by any means, but it draws you in: Jackson, given the chance to indulge his hammier instincts, squeezes his patient drawl for every drop of gravitas. For a minute or two, Marvel’s latest streaming venture seems like a proper TV series.

Jackson has now played Fury in 11 films across the popular Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero franchise, seldom getting the chance to evince anything resembling real human emotion. This scene in the train carriage sits in stark contrast to the usual Marvel tone, which traffics in glib quips and blandly economical story-driven dialogue. The change of pace works: we’re lured in. But then the anecdote is over. And it’s Mendelsohn’s time to speak. Within a matter of seconds, the scene accelerates into high gibberish, and the two men start yelling unconvincingly at each other about alien invasions and intergalactic conflict. Ah, well. It was nice while it lasted.

The scene is, in many ways, a microcosm of exactly what’s wrong with Secret Invasion as a whole. It is a series that was billed as a dark, down-to-earth spy drama that just happened to involve shape-shifting aliens. It’s an expensive, self-serious production with a big-name cast; alongside Jackson and Mendelsohn, the series stars Kingsley Ben-Adir, Emilia Clarke, Olivia Colman and Don Cheadle. More than anything, Secret Invasion wants to be taken seriously. And in flashes – such as Jackson’s careful monologue – it manages this. But for all its aspirations of grit and intrigue, Secret Invasion always lapses inevitably into a tenor of daffy supernatural melodrama. Director Ali Selim talked up the series’ heavyweight influences in an interview with Empire, saying the early episodes were striving for the vein of “classic espionage noir, like The Third Man”. Forget The Third Man – I’m not sure Secret Invasion manages to live up to the lofty dramatic peaks of Orson Welles’ frozen peas commercial.