If there’s one thing you can say about The Sympathizer, it’s that this show can hardly be described as just one thing. It’s a miniseries overflowing with ideas, ambition, and intelligence, and while it can range from disorienting to delightful, it’s worth watching for how intensely it commits to its individual approach.

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The Sympathizer comes to HBO as an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Brought to the screen by Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar, the show revolves around a man known only as the Captain (Hoa Xuande), a North Vietnamese spy implanted in the secret police of South Vietnam. He’s tasked with being the right-hand-man of the South’s most petulant General (Toan Le), who gladly works with—and often for—the CIA. As the tides begin to turn against the American-backed South and Saigon falls in 1975, the General is forced to flee, and the Captain is forced to join him. Along with other members of the secret police, family, and friends, they go to America as refugees, where the Captain is instructed to keep tabs on any counter-revolutionary........

© Observer