Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Florence Pugh, Alexander Skarsgard, Michael Shannon, Michael Moshonov, Simona Brown, Clare Holman, Kate Sumpter, Gennady Fleyscher, Amir Khoury, Katharina Schuttler, Charles Dance, Lubna Azabal, Daniel Litman, Charif Ghattas, Max Irons, Sam Troughton.
In the war to protect what you believe is yours, sometimes you have to employ methods in which are dubious at best, downright ugly at worst, it is the thinking and planning ahead in which wins the minds of the people you are charged with protecting, but one in which the enemy you have created will fight you every step of the way to kill you first.
In war you take every advantage you can find, even perhaps recruiting the unsuspecting to your cause, you find the truth of their life and you exploit them, you give them confidence, you feed them intelligence, and you feed them lies, for the sound of war is signalled not by the rattle of machine guns, but in the steady beat struck out by the approaching drum.
In what seems such a short space of time, Ms. Pugh has managed to produce not only a fine c.v. of work on television, but has become a leading light of the acting fraternity; to hold your own against the likes of Anthony Hopkins, Andrew Scott and Emma Thompson in King Lear, Christopher Fairbanks in Lady Macbeth and now Michael Shannon and Lubna Azabel in The Little Drummer Girl is an achievement, a sense of glory that is humble and to be praised, a sheer wall of fortitude and flair that has been navigated with youthful expertise.
In every sense Ms. Pugh’s performance is absolute dynamite, the wide-eyed optimism, the sense of accomplishment in the act of symbolic terrorism, every inch of incredible prowess on screen dominates and has the viewer wondering just how far she would go to prove to her Israeli cohorts and Palestinian sympathisers of her intentions.
Alongside the aforementioned Michael Shannon and Lubna Azabel, Alexander Skarsgard demonstrates the hunger of revenge with devastating results, his grooming of Ms. Pugh’s Charlie to their cause is one in which is terrifying and fascinating to watch, the viewer left with no doubt that the line between soldier and spy is a very thin one.
Adapters Michael Lesslie and Claire Wilson have taken perhaps one of John Le Carre’s less-appreciated novels and turned it into a force of nature, the line between reality and supposed honour ever shifting, ever decreasing, often flowing with the riddles of our own advantages and pre-determined values, The Little Drummer Girl is a scintillating series waiting to explode.
Ian D. Hall