[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
“Go ahead and underestimate me. That’ll be fun.” is one of my favorite phrases that I have yet to use in public, but it’s the essential set up for Peacock’s new spy thriller, PONIES, which follows two CIA widows who take the reins of their husbands’ mission after they’re killed in action with no forthcoming explanation about why. The titular PONIES is an acronym for “persons of no interest,” which the women are considered to be in 1977 Moscow in a pre-Nikita world.
Stationed at the American Embassy in the USSR (with filming in Budapest) with their husbands, Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson play Bea and Twila, new acquaintances who soon share a sad commonality. Bea is the college-educated, well-placed secretary who speaks Russian and works for one of the department heads while her husband, Chris (Louis Boyer) traffics in spycraft. Their loving marriage is a partnership, as Bea bides her time typing with the promise that after his assignment ends, they’ll go home to the States and she can begin her own career.
Twila’s marriage to Chris’s partner, Tom (John Macmillan) strikes more as a marriage of convenience that got her out a poor, small-town trailer park and away from an absentee mother. She’s traveled the world, doesn’t have to work, and while Bea is prone to overthinking things, Twila has no filter and dives right in.
When their husbands die, they’re shipped back to the US, but neither is particularly happy to reintegrate into American civilian life. Bea wants to know what happened to her husband and Twila is adrift. After they’re patted on the head and sent on their way with a gold star the only proof their husbands died in service to their country, they march back into CIA headquarters and pitch themselves as their husbands’ replacements. Because nobody will see them coming.
Sitting CIA head George Bush worries about the optics if that fails, but he also warms to the idea that perhaps they can make inroads where no other agents have. With his off-the-books blessing and the parameters of what they will and won’t be told laid out before them, Bea and Twila return to the embassy and are initially deployed as couriers and lookouts until they start to piece together the dangerous conspiracy that took out their husbands. And along the way, the find themselves pulled further into the fray with a who’s who of insiders, informants, and criminals.
Co-created, produced, and written by David Iserson (Mr. Robot, New Girl) and producing director Susanna Fogel (The Flight Attendant, The Spy Who Dumped Me) alongside producer/showrunner Mike Daniels (Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist, The Village) and producers Jessica Rhoades (Black Mirror, Station Eleven, Dirty John) and Emilia Clarke, the series also stars Adrian Lester (Sandman, Day After Tomorrow), Artjom Gilz (Tar, Das Boot), Nicholas Podany (Saturday Night, Hello Tomorrow), Petro Ninovskyi (Shttl, Silence), and Vic Michaelis (Very Important People, Upload).
It’s a fast eight episodes, and Clarke and Richardson are a perfect mix as new friends who would likely never cross paths with each other under different circumstances. They don’t really know each other yet, but they’re the only ones they’ve got, and the only ones who understand the emotional stakes of why they’re risking everything for the truth, closure, and a fresh start. The first episode of PONIES drops Thursday, January 15th, at 3:01 am ET on Peacock, with new episodes every Thursday. Here’s a sneak peek.
Photos courtesy of Katalin Vermes for Peacock; video courtesy of Peacock.
