Board of Directors

The Board of Directors is a mysterious collective purported to secretly run The Agency. In episode 38, "Salesman", they make their only on-screen appearance. Here, they seem to be in control over Agency boss Jakob Resh. Alluded to in several episodes, they do not appear again in the series.

Behind the Scenes
The Board of Directors was conceived as a means to inject another layer of mystery into the workings of The Agency, should the audience eventually find out too much about Jakob and the rest of the backstory. This was inspired by the mythology portions of The X-Files, and by the work of script editor Andrew Cartmel in the last few seasons of the original Doctor Who.

The backstory of the Board was laid out in the Shadows Writing Guidelines, with the goal of providing information to the writers and production team that could inform the scripts without directly or explicitly giving away the mystery.

Onscreen, the Board effect was achieved by stringing Christmas tree lights onto the black curtain in Studio B, fastening them with gaffer tape. A crew member gently agitated the curtain while the shot faded in and out with a sound effect superimposed in post-production.