“Hour” (Moafi) is the brains behind the network, she’s in love with “Poet” (Mara), who spies on her on behalf of the Bureau, and both of them eventually find themselves in opposition to Tayo Miller (Henry), who was never quite as idealistic as them, even when they were helping him through training, and is more concerned with victory at any cost. Squint your eyes a little, and it’s almost timely. A little cluttered, a little nonsensical, a little philosophically out of whack, but not totally risible, either. The action jumps from three set time periods: ’09 itself, when they’re all undergoing training, the “present,” as they try to infiltrate and dismantle a white supremacist group in the face of terroristic threats, and the “future,” circa 2034, when an all-seeing surveillance network designed for noble purposes (haha!) is either manipulated by humans or becomes self-aware to the point that it makes pre-emptive arrests based on thoughts, or something.Īll of this? It’s fine.

The story here, from creator Tom Rob Smith ( London Spy), is deceptively simple: The FBI class of ’09, many of them recruited from outside law enforcement, are considered a special group destined for greatness until certain fissures emerge that set them against each other.

Without them, this could have been an outright failure, and was guaranteed to be forgettable with them, it’s a solid eight-episode miniseries that won’t go down as one of the greats, but will absolutely grab and hold your attention through the end… or at least through the four episodes made available to critics. Those three, with an extra emphatic nod to Henry (the brilliant “Paper Boi” from Atlanta) are the saving graces of Class of ’09, an otherwise serviceable but occasionally disoriented FBI thriller from FX (streaming on Hulu). Kate Mara, Brian Tyree Henry, Sepideh Moafi: Take a bow.

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