Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Old Man’ on FX/Hulu, Where Jeff Bridges is Forced Back Into The Spy Life He Left Behind

Adapted from the bestseller by Thomas Perry, The Old Man (FX/Hulu) stars Jeff Bridges as a former CIA operative who for decades has been living a quiet life under an assumed name. He thought he was out. But he’s pulled back into the game when they come for him. Old? Yeah. But that doesn’t mean he’s lost his particular set of skills. Joining Bridges here are John Lithgow, Amy Brenneman, Alia Shawkat, and Gbenga Akinnagbe. 

THE OLD MAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man grunts and awakens in a darkened room; it’s 1:15am. He trudges to the bathroom, where a fluorescent light snaps on. He makes slight water, to no satisfaction. 3:03am, repeat. Only this time, it’s part reality, part dream.

The Gist: Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges) lives alone in upstate New York. It’s a rambling old house, but his rottweilers Dave and Carol keep him company, as do phone conversations with his daughter, which have become even more vital since his wife Abbey (Hiam Abbass) passed. Chase is just another guy spinning out his retirement. Only he’s not. One day, there’s a man in town who shouldn’t be there. Chase goes home, fashions a simple security system out of the dogs’ old food cans, and sure enough, the guy shows up in his living room in the middle of the night, silenced pistol in hand. “You wanna tell me your name?” Chase asks as he stands over him with his own revolver. Blammo.

Chase hastily prepares a home invasion cover story for the local law, grabs his go bag – numerous passports/identities, at least two Berettas, a stack of cash – and takes to the road in his vintage Land Cruiser with Dave and Carol in tow. “This is happening,” he tells his daughter over the phone. “It’s not a drill. I gotta get ahead of it now.” Somehow, after all these years, they found him. And whether they just want him back or actually want him dead, Chase isn’t pausing to find out. Just ask the dead guy laying in his living room.

Harold Harper (John Lithgow) receives a call at home. Would the FBI’s Assistant Director for Counterintelligence like to consult on a containment operation that’s gone sideways? Harper can’t believe the Chase situation has resurfaced – “That file was resolved three decades ago!” – but nevertheless, here it is. He packs up his grief over the recent loss of his son and daughter-in-law, kisses his grandchild goodbye, and hops a plane to where the action is.

Out on the road, Chase is making preparations. But he’s also dealing with the crush of memory. In a flashback, we see a younger Dan (Bill Heck) and Abbey (Leem Lubany) sitting at a diner just like the one Chase is in now. “What if we don’t keep running?” he asked his wife way back then. “What if we find a place to stand still, and we build something there?” It was the beginning of their pact, their life together away from it all, and there were thirty good years. But it’s all come back with a vengeance now. With a team of operators on his tail, Chase turns to fight.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? What if Donald Sutherland had played Jack Bauer? Because with the seasoned Bridges as the titular old man, he’s just as adept at bickering with the government and engaging in spycraft, gunplay, and fistfights as Kiefer Sutherland ever was in 24. Speaking of the guv, there’s also a wrinkle of something like Homeland here, with the dirty business of espionage and command and control operating at levels unseen by the civilian eye.

Our Take: There’s a vivid sense of atmosphere to The Old Man from the second it begins, which is certainly due in part to the sheer gravity of an aging but still spry Jeff Bridges, who battled cancer treatments and COVID during filming. He’s all the better for it here, as a guy who knows he’s getting old – he’s reminded of it every hour, getting up during the night – but knows also that his past life and training will always be with him. All it takes is a flicker, the brief recognition of a wrong individual in town, and this old man goes rolling home to set up countermeasures and check his weapon. And the creeping soundtrack of disjointed blues notes follows along like his trusty hounds.

It’s also a benefit of The Old Man that it doesn’t dwell on the whys and hows. Chase knows why and how this is happening now – for thirty years, he hoped for the best, but prepared for the worst. And now that the worst has come, there’s nothing to it but to “frighten them back,” as his daughter encourages him across the phone lines. And speaking of phone lines, in the first episode, Bridges and Lithgow establish their characters’ prickly chemistry across the very same thing, never meeting face to face but re-orienting themselves to one another right away. They exchange pleasantries over their respective personal losses. They talk a little shop. (“The op is not to kill you, it’s to retrieve you,” Harper says, and drops the name of an old target, Faraz Hamzad, which almost certainly means there’s a lasting gripe somewhere.) But when it comes right down to it, Harper can only hear it over the phone or watch it on a fallen operator’s body cam as the old guy who he thought was just a buried file in the ground comes back to life as deadly as ever.

Parting Shot: In the dusty aftermath of another confrontation between the hunted and his hunters, Harper and the tactical operators can only stare at their screens. The phone rings, and it’s for the Assistant Director. “That’s three,” Chase growls. “Anyone you send at me, I’m sending back in bags. Anyone gets into my kid, I’m sending back in pieces. Do you recognize me now?”

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: In the dusty aftermath of another confrontation between the hunted and his hunters, Harper and the tactical operators can only stare at their screens. The phone rings, and it’s for the Assistant Director. “That’s three,” Chase growls. “Anyone you send at me, I’m sending back in bags. Anyone gets into my kid, I’m sending back in pieces. Do you recognize me now?”

Sleeper Star: Freya and Cain, obviously. As Chase’s beloved, devoted rottweilers, the canine actors are adorable – oh, you got out of bed? Let me just settle into that warm space – and formidable. One command from their master and cute mode becomes kill mode.

Most Pilot-y Line: Harper has just gotten in touch with Chase personally, as a sideline to the op that’s out for his capture. And he’s explained how simple it was for them to trace the phone Chase believed to be clean and untraceable. He’s leveling with his old adversary. “I tell you this to remind you that you have no idea how different the game is from the last time you played it.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Jeff Bridges is fantastic in The Old Man, as is John Lithgow. It’s a show that promises to parse what it means to become old, what’s lost, and also what is never, ever forgotten.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges