Paramount+

If you’re a Paramount+ or Showtime subscriber, there’s a decent chance that you spent at least some of the Thanksgiving break watching the first two episodes of The Agency, the Michael Fassbender-fronted espionage drama that the company has invested a huge amount of money in. Based on the cult French series The Bureau, starring Matthieu Kassovitz, it’s a grim and self-consciously serious piece of drama, low on explosive shootouts and one-liners and high on tortured scenes of introspection, as Fassbender’s deep-cover operative, codename Martian, is brought in from the cold by his CIA superiors to their London outpost, only to realize that he has not been entirely honest as to a tortured romantic liaison that he went through in Africa.

When Kevin Costner announced that he would not be returning to Yellowstone, the contemporary Western series that revitalized his career, the news was greeted with consternation. Costner had been the pivotal figure in the show’s previous four and a half seasons — and it was expected that he would return as the patriarch John Dutton III for the final installment, even though he was busy filming his own epic pictures, Horizon. However, amid well-documented spats between him and the show’s creator Taylor Sheridan, Costner announced that he would not, in fact, return for Yellowstone’s final episodes.   Rather than leaving the door open for a final, face-saving cameo, Sheridan dealt with Costner in brutal fashion.