Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Guy Pearce, Damian Lewis, Anna Maxwell Martin, Adrian Edmondson, Stephen Kunken, Monika Gossmann, Nicholas Rowe, Karel Roden, Puiu Mircea Lascus, Lucy Russell, Lucy Akhurst, Jennifer Marsala, Alexander Terentyev, Anastasia Hille, Gershwyn Eustache Jnr, Steven Elder, Thomas Arnold, Gilly Gilchrist, Daniel Lapaine, Jacob James Beswick, Mark Flitton, Rick Warden, Colin Mace, Jed Aukin, Anna Andresen, David Coomber, Jay Simpson, Lucinda Raikes, Nicholas Pritchard, Morgane Ferru, Denis Khoroshko, Kate Fahy, Jolyon Coy, George Taylor, Reza Diako, Alice Barclay, Tugba Tirpan, Ruth Clarson, Edward Baker-Duly, Roger Barclay, Orlando Wells, Justine Mitchell, Mark Tandy.
Perhaps it’s a shame, and even expected in a digital world where everyone hides behind a better, more elusive filter, but the fact that we have not had a single spy revealed to the world who carries the same weight of urgency and damage inflicted to national security as Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean or Guy Burgess is to be honest, a bore, a rejection of all that the classic spy novels and history have insisted is de rigueur, that is the way of the world – we spy on you, you spy on us and somewhere in between a personality, a character is made into a superstar of cinema and literature.
Without Ian Fleming’s involvement in World War Two would we have had James Bond, would we have the notion in our imaginations, the pictures in our head of scandal, sex, intrigue, the finger on the trigger of the gun, of creations such as Harry Lime, Richard Hannay, the stoic George Smiley? Would we have reason to plunge ourselves into that world and allow ourselves to pull the collar of the coat a little closer as the darkness and fog enveloped us as we played along in our minds that the person we were meeting for a friendly pint was actually ‘one of them’, not what we call ‘one of us’?
Today it is all done on computers, remote surveillance, the barest human interaction, because a human being has the capacity to outsmart another and weave a tale that is hard, almost impossible to unpick; a camera, a drone, a swipe card to enter an office block in an ordinary part of town, they cannot lie like a human can.
Although spying is as old as the idea of nationhood, it is arguably only a small stretch of time in human history when it has been considered ‘sexy’, attractive a concept in which the players could be said to be playing a devilish game, and from the lips of Mata Hari herself and through the Second World War and onto the dangerous precept of Nuclear annihilation during The Cold War, spying was a game played on a very different board.
Kim Philby and Nicholas Elliot, played by the redoubtable Guy Pearce and Damien Lewis in the larger than life A Spy Among Friends, are two powerful pieces on the chess board of the industry, one name synonymous with being branded a traitor, a stooge for the KGB, the other a friend, a best friend, and one who could not see until it was almost too late just how far he had been allowed to be taken in by the charming and charismatic Marxist.
This was a time for adventurers with a loose grasp of morality, and for Philby, and so many others, it was an adventure, whether they were doing it out of conscience, misplaced loyalty, for a cause, for sex, or perhaps for the worst reason of all, money, the post war spy was one to whom nobody knew they were a god, but they acted like it all the same.
The six part series, which allows Adrian Edmondson and Anna Maxwell Martin the scope to tread with passion in roles of stirring grandeur, and shows the two leading names to be of equal staunch brilliance, is the epitome of the spy novel itself, the slow burn, the false leads and trails, the guarded, almost polite to the point of deference accusations, the welcome signs of true noir being placed in certain sections of the narrative; if the audience didn’t know better they would believe it to be a great tale of espionage, a work of fiction to lighten the evening viewing…not the outrageously true story of two men set out to get one over on the other with lies, subterfuge, and calmness of tone.
A great six-part series, well-acted, written by Alexander Cary and Ben Macintyre with symbolism and grit, A Spy Among Friends is as respectable as anything laid down by Fleming in his prime.
Ian D. Hall