Hardboiled Peg
All’s well that’s Atwell.
After a stumbling start with season one of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. (things improved with the sophomore season), Marvel Television looked to Ms. Peggy Carter to step capably in. She aced it, paving the way for Daredevil to strut his impressive stuff and suggesting we can expect great things from Jessica Jones.
Set in New York, 1946, Agent Carter sees Peggy tasked with performing menial duties in the office of the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR). She’s lumped with lunch orders and chauvinistic put-downs as alpha agent Jack Thompson (Chad Michael Murray) and the boys chase Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), on the run after being accused of selling weapons to the highest bidder. How does Peggy keep her sanity and self-worth? By secretly teaming up with Stark’s butler Edwin Jarvis ( James D’Arcy) to clear Howard’s name and find those that framed him…
Mixing comic-book sci-fi, post-war espionage and screwball comedy to winning effect, Marvel’s Agent Carter is spry and spruce. Sure, the ‘death’ of Peggy’s beau, Steve Rogers, hangs over our heroine throughout (we revisit footage from Captain America: The First Avenger to see Cap plunge his plane into the Artic), but this is a smartly dressed, snappily designed world that brims with adventure, intrigue and derring-do – one of the key influences is Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
Created by Captain America: Civil War scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the show fits into the existing architecture of the MCU while allowing Atwell to finally flex as Peggy. She excels in every area – verbal jousting, problem solving, kicking ass – and the liberal sprinkling of feminism is as timely now as it was in 1946, when women surveyed a new landscape after slipping social shackles while menfolk were off fighting the war. Season 2 promises Peggy in Los Angeles in 1947, tackling the nuclear
Jamie Graham threat. Bring it. Extras › TBC