In the midst of Netflix’s laundry list of titles adapted from popular novels lies The Night Agent, a political thriller wrapping all of Washington D.C. into a massive conspiracy, and now, it looks like the drama has officially found its leads. The streamer has announced that Gabriel Basso and Luciane Buchanan will star in the upcoming adaptation, created by Timeless showrunner Shawn Ryan and produced by Sony Pictures TV, where Ryan currently has an overall deal.
The thriller, ordered to a ten-episode series in July, follows Peter Sutherland (Basso), a low-level FBI agent working in the basement of the White House, in charge of a mysterious phone that never rings. When it eventually does, Sutherland is dragged into a conspiracy leading all the way to the highest powers in America and roping in Rose Larkin (Buchanan), a young tech CEO who finds herself running for her life after assassins target the aunt and uncle she has been staying with.
Based on the 2019 novel by Matthew Quirk, Ryan serves as showrunner for The Night Agent, adapting Quirk’s work and executive producing alongside Seth Gordon — who will also direct the show’s pilot — Marney Hochman of MiddKid Productions, Julia Gunn for Exhibit A, Jamie Vanderbilt, William Sherak, Paul Neinstein, and Nicole Tossou for Project X, and David Beaubaire for Sunset Lane Media.
Ryan revealed his work on The Night Agent’s adaptation at the end of 2020, in the midst of a Twitter thread discussing some of the best books the writer had read that year. Ryan placed Quirk’s novel in the category of “Books I read, Decided To Adapt For Television And May Have Already Finished Writing The Pilot Episode," a cheeky reference to what Deadline confirms as the pilot script he had written on spec with Sony TV as part of their overall deal.
The project is Ryan’s second television adaptation since Timeless went off the air in 2018, arriving on the heels of S.W.A.T., the CBS series based on the 1975 ABC series of the same name.