Marriage is murder

Meet the Smiths. Her name's Jane, a name frequently partnered with the word plain; his name's John, like in a John Doe, or a Dear John letter. These are commonplace and indistinctive names, names made to blend in wherever they go, names that will not arouse suspicion on a business card or when called out in a coffee shop.

- Raja Sen

 It's this thinking that led Ian Fleming, hunting for an unremarkable name for his secret agent, to borrow in from the American ornithologist James Bond. Fleming called it "the dullest name I ever heard". Yet dullness does not leap to mind at the mention of Bond.

Over the years, many attempts have been made to imbue the Smiths with a touch of danger-and they've all shared the same name. In 1941, Alfred Hitchcock made a comedy with Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery called Mr & Mrs Smith, which, despite its provenance, did not feature guns or spies.

In the mid-1990s, a TV show of the same name starred Scott Bakula and Maria Bello as secret agents who don't get along and are forced to partner together.

In 2005 came the most famous Mr & Mrs Smith, the film that threw together Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, casting the inflammably attractive actors as rival assassins who just happen to be married. The only thing we can say about Mr & Mrs Smith, in fact, is that each version is different.

The latest iteration-created by Donald Glover and Francesca Sloane, streaming on Amazon Prime Video-is also a spy series, but that's where the similarity ends. In this well-tailored comedy about espionage and marriage, Maya Erskine and Glover play strangers, two recent recruits to a mysterious spy agency, thrown together much like in an arranged marriage: from their differing answers, the only immediate common ground is a love for Korean cuisine. Every episode brings a new mission and an upgrade in their domestic dynamic.