The New Mr. And Mrs. Smith TV Series Makes A Big, Smart Change From The Movie

Doug Liman's 2005 movie "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" had a killer premise: What if the two of the hottest people in the world were seemingly living a mundane married life, but neither knew the other was secretly a spy? And what would happen if they were eventually tasked with killing each other? (It also had the benefit of starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, whose real-life romance supercharged the entire tabloid industry.) When a TV adaptation was announced, originally meant to star Donald Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, it was easy to picture those actors slotting into the archetypes from Liman's film. You could picture a simple version of what that show would look like. And it might have been pleasant, given the inherent charisma of both of those actors.

But thankfully, as the first trailer shows, this show isn't interested in being a beat for beat remake of the film. Similar to the way series like "Fargo," "Westworld," and "Scott Pilgrim Takes Off" took inspiration from their cinematic forebears and put their own spin on those ideas, the upcoming "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" TV show (which now stars Glover and Maya Erskine) does not begin with the spies having years of marriage under their belts. Instead, they're thrown together by their agency into a fake marriage as part of a cover story, and things get complicated when they begin to develop real feelings for each other. That's a much more vibrant and dramatic way to tell this story. No need to rely on boring montages of home life mundanity to introduce us to their circumstances — this approach allows the audience to be engaged in the protagonists' relationship in a more active way, perhaps yearning for something to blossom amid dangerous new missions every week.