Peacock’s new spy series The Copenhagen Test is a tense exploration of identity and surveillance, merging the grounded action of the Jason Bourne films with the unsettling technological speculation of Black Mirror. The eight-episode first season, which premiered on December 27, 2025, stars Simu Liu as an intelligence analyst whose life becomes a stage-managed performance after his senses are hacked.
The show follows Alexander Hale (Simu Liu), a first-generation Chinese American intelligence analyst for a secretive U.S. agency called The Orphanage. After suffering from unexplained migraines, Alexander makes a horrifying discovery: his brain has been compromised by an advanced piece of nanotechnology. A hacker now has live, unfiltered access to everything he sees and hears, turning him into an unwilling surveillance device.
The Core Premise: A Life Hijacked
Faced with this breach, Alexander’s superiors at The Orphanage—led by Peter Moira (Brian d’Arcy James) and the founder St. George (Kathleen Chalfant)—decide not to close the hack but to weaponize it. To smoke out the culprits, they turn Alexander’s entire existence into an elaborate deception. He is assigned a handler, Samantha “Parker” (Sinclair Daniel), who scripts his life and monitors his every move. He is also paired with a fellow agent, Michelle (Melissa Barrera), who enters his life as a potential love interest but whose true role is part of the operation.
“The paranoia comes not from what I can’t see. The paranoia comes from what I can’t understand,” explained series creator Thomas Brandon in an interview with Deadline. He described the show’s style, noting the camera stays close to Alexander to make the audience experience his manipulated world.
Alexander’s mission is to act completely normal, maintaining the performance of his life to lure the hackers into the open. The central question becomes one of extreme sacrifice: how much of your privacy, autonomy, and self can you give to your country before you lose who you are entirely?.
The Bourne Identity Connection: Action and Identity Crisis
The parallels to the Jason Bourne franchise are immediately apparent and intentional. Like Bourne, Alexander Hale is a highly capable operative plagued by memory gaps and uncertainty about his own allegiances. He is haunted by his past in special forces and must use brutal, practical hand-to-hand combat to survive.
The series channels the visceral, close-quarters fight choreography that defined the Bourne movies. In Episode 7, Simu Liu performs martial arts sequences described as “down-to-earth” and intensely physical, focusing on smart, calculated moves rather than fantastical flair.
However, The Copenhagen Test adds a distinct modern layer to Bourne’s classic amnesiac spy. Alexander’s crisis isn’t just about forgotten memories—it’s about a present reality that is being actively fabricated around him. Furthermore, his status as a first-generation immigrant adds a dimension of political and social suspicion, constantly forcing him to prove where his loyalties truly lie.
The Black Mirror Influence: Technology and Consent
Where the show diverges into Black Mirror territory is in its deep exploration of the horror inherent in the hacking technology itself. The core premise—of having one’s own biological senses hijacked as a surveillance feed—is a classic Charlie Brooker-esque nightmare, making digital privacy fears terrifyingly personal.
The show pushes this concept into ethically murky areas, particularly regarding consent. The creators have openly discussed the “weird consent issues” raised by the plot. With both enemy hackers and his own agency watching Alexander’s every moment, mundane acts like taking a shower or being intimate become fraught with violation.
“We had a shower scene… he just looks down,” Thomas Brandon said, noting the scene was cut for being “a little too funny” but that it spoke to the theme of total bodily sacrifice the story explores.
This creates a pervasive Truman Show-like atmosphere, where Alexander cannot trust any interaction or environment. The show suggests that in an age of social media curation, we are all performing versions of ourselves, but Alexander’s performance is one he cannot log out of, with life-or-death stakes attached to every gesture.
The Cast and Creative Team
The series boasts significant star power both in front of and behind the camera. Simu Liu not only stars but also served as an executive producer, taking an active role in the creative process.
“Simu actually joined our writers’ room for the first two weeks… He wasn’t just an executive producer in name. He’d focus on relationships between other characters, not just his own,” revealed creator Thomas Brandon.
Melissa Barrera plays the enigmatic Michelle, marking a major shift from her recent role in the Scream franchise to the world of espionage. The supporting cast includes Sinclair Daniel, Brian d’Arcy James, Mark O’Brien, and Kathleen Chalfant.
The series was created by Thomas Brandon, who co-showruns with Jennifer Yale. It is executive produced by horror maestro James Wan (through his Atomic Monster banner), adding a layer of genre pedigree to the project.
Critical Reception and Viewer Response
Critical opinion on The Copenhagen Test has been mixed, highlighting a divide between its high-concept appeal and its narrative execution. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds a 75% approval rating, while Metacritic gave it a weighted score of 61, indicating “generally favorable” reviews.
Some critics praised the show’s timely ideas and action. A review on Soapcentral.com called it “one of the must-watch shows of the holiday season,” successfully blending its influences into something that feels “eerily close to real life”. Collider suggested it could be “streaming’s next sleeper hit,” positioned well within Peacock’s lineup.
Other reviews were more critical. Variety called the series a “dastardly disappointment,” criticizing its overly complicated plot, overstuffed cast of characters, and a pace that removes much of the inherent tension. The review argued that despite a solid premise and cast, the show “isn’t clever enough to stand out” in a crowded thriller landscape.
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Viewer impressions on platforms like IMDb reflect this split, with some audiences finding the plot twists engaging and the characters compelling, while others feel the story becomes muddled.
Release and Availability
All eight episodes of The Copenhagen Test Season 1 were released globally on December 27, 2025, on the Peacock streaming service. The series is available to stream with a Peacock subscription.
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