FILE SPY REVIEW FULL

The opener came rushing out of the blocks last Sunday night and shows no sign of slowing down yet. ITV’s surprisingly excellent adaptation of Len Deighton’s popular spy novel continues apace here in this second part. Still catching up on The Ipcress File episode 2? Read Steve’s review of episode 1 here. Spy fiction may so often be cold in temperature, tone and topic, but we’ve warmed to this one already. This could easily be a BBC or HBO production. ITV dramas often have something of an ‘ITV feel’ to them. The tilted camerawork is also reminiscent of spy films of yore, yet another appreciative nod backwards in the direction of the 1960’s when espionage was the order of the literary and cinematic day. You’re not just watching something set in 1963 – it is 1963. From the font in the opening titles to the wardrobe and colour palette, it’s all seriously immersive. The visuals are all pleasingly rich and impressive.

A nice nod and indication of things to come. One sweeping view of a swinging sixties cityscape subtly showed us a cinema showing The Manchurian Candidate, a 1962 film about a US brainwashing program that would’ve been showing in picturehouses at the time.

We’ve not touched upon the story’s mind control elements as yet. What does this mean for national and international security? We’ll find out over the next five Sundays. The job was going swimmingly until the deal went south and Professor Dawson took a chestful of bullets. An offer made to him by spymaster Major Dalby – the always good value Tom Hollander – sees him out of prison for a mission: track down a kidnapped British nuclear scientist through his Rolodex of dodgy Berlin contacts. Something of a wide boy, the fiercely intelligent yet slightly bored and anti-authority Harry is enjoying a side-line in selling contraband in the divided Berlin when he’s caught and thrown in military prison to languish for eight years. Peaky Blinders and Gangs of London star Joe Cole is expertly cast here and looks set to give us an equally cynical and roguishly likeable version of Palmer.Īlways touted as more of a studied, inverted and working class version of 007, the new iteration of Harry Palmer still gets himself in enough trouble with bad guys and wakes up with enough beautiful women to give Bond a run for his money. Caine’s are big shoes to fill, but they fit the new Harry perfectly. You may remember The Ipcress File as the paperback up on a parent’s shelf, or as the 1965 film starring Michael Caine as the sardonic and bespectacled British spook Harry Palmer.

FILE SPY REVIEW FULL

In the current news cycle, we’re not sure anyone really needs anything too convincing and full of dread. Luckily for viewers, this new six-part spy thriller swerves the uber-realism of, say, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, in favour of a more entertaining take on the spy game. Hear a phrase like ‘it seems more and more likely every day that we are all shortly to be blown to smithereens’ now and you could be forgiven for thinking you’d accidentally switched over to a rolling news channel, not tuned in for some escapist fiction. What the makers of ITV’s adaptation of Len Deighton’s 1962 book The Ipcress File weren’t to know when they started work on the project, was that the subject would also loom large over the world by the time the first episode was broadcast.Įerie prescience fills the room further when mentions of mounting tensions with the Soviets are made.

Nuclear war with those east of the Iron Curtain looms large over enormous swathes of spy thrillers, be they in novel, film or television form. Frozen Moscow vistas, men in tan overcoats sat shivering on benches in frosty-looking parks, spies who come in from the cold… If there’s one thing that almost all espionage thrillers are, it’s a bit chilly.Īnd then, of course, there’s the coldest part of all – the Cold War.

File spy review