Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter. “Marvel’s Agent Carter” will debut with a two-hour premiere on Tuesday, Jan. 6 (8:00-10:00 p.m., ET), on ABC. (ABC/Kelsey McNeal)
The big-band music swings, the hair, wardrobe and autos scream 1940s and the dialog is wonderfully witty. “Marvel’s Agent Carter” is ready to win over the small screen, with Haley Atwell a terrific lead. Reprising her role from the “Captain America” movies, she’s got courage and more gravitas than your average comic book hero. The series successfully blends super-heroics with women’s post-war fight against sexism in a fun, winking way.
With men returning to jobs in the booming post-war economy, the little ladies are bumped from the workforce or downgraded to secretary status. Agent Carter plays along, knowing she’s more capable than the lot of her dismissive secret agent co-workers. Her bold stand for feminist values makes Peggy Carter a hero for the ages, and a character with more at stake than the usual.
In a new short-run series on ABC, “Marvel’s Agent Carter,” premiering tonight 7-9 p.m. on KMGH, Atwell shines as the cheeky, witty broad — Marvel’s first female-driven storyline — underestimated by the males who expect her to serve coffee and keep quiet, and happy to engage in high-powered action sequences on her own. Peggy the Riveter and then some! The femme fisticuffs can be as brutal as anything the unfocused “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” serves up.
You don’t have to be an Avengers follower to get a kick out of Agent Carter. But if you watch for Chad Michael Murray as Agent Jack Thompson, James D’Arcy as crany butler Edwin Jarvis and Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark, you’ll quickly catch up.
