The Game

Have I Got News For You?

Cold War spies, you know the ones: Bond, Smiley et al.  This BBC2 apple hasn't fallen far from the tree.  The title sequence has an espionage montage set to twanging, mournful Ipcress File-alike tones.  Already there's been a tense stand-off, whisperings of a trap and a killing.  So begins our induction into the world of Joe Lambe (Tom Hughes), rising young star of MI5 in drab 1972 Britain. Model-pretty Joe works for an old dog of a boss known ironically as 'Daddy' (Brian Cox) and who may or may not be losing his powers.  A KGB defector has passed word about Operation Glass and now the race is on to find out what it involves.  A traitor is killed, and another, sending shivers through the team.  Daddy's deputy Sarah Montag (Victoria Hamilton) says there must be a mole among them: mummy's boy Bobby Waterhouse (Paul Ritter), her own husband, nerdy Alan (Jonathan Aris), police liaison DC Jim Fenchurch (Shaun Dooley) and admin Wendy Straw (Chloe Pirrie).

In other words, classic spy drama territory.  Is our boy Joe all that he seems?  Another murder puts this in doubt and there are five more episodes which we expect will be a taut, switchback ride.  If you like your spies more Smiley, i.e. in rather murkier moral and physical territory than Bond, then this is for you: clipped remarks, damp dark streets, the fug of cigars and cut-glass tumblers of brandy in the firelight (well, the miners' strike meant power cuts, you know) while men called Sergei run about with guns.  A refreshing dose of realism after the pre-election debate.

The Intruders

Unusual 8-part, prime-time fare from BBC2 with a cross-Atlantic cast.  If it's true that vampire stories originated in our former ignorance of decomposition, as many contend, then the plethora of zombie/possession tales around seems to testify to our having a hellraiser of a long way to go to find out what keeps body and soul together, or parts them.  This starts bafflingly: a young girl in California in 1990 is visited by two menacing men in the middle of the night and given a number '9', after which she kills herself in a bath, leaving a note for a man who in the present day appears to enlist the help of ex-cop Jack (John Simm) while looking into the death of a mother and son elsewhere in America.  Needless to say, the family were visited and killed by these same two 'men in black'.  Simm's character meanwhile has troubles of his own, namely his wife, who on her birthday has suddenly started dancing to jazz, which she hates, and then disappears on a supposed business trip to Seattle.  Then there's nine-year-old Madison, celebrating her birthday when she too is visited by one of the gangster duo and thereafter starts behaving very strangely indeed. 

Still following?  No opportunity for menace is overlooked.  A car fender, a pair of arms, the pupils of an eye all seem to betoken something sinister.  By the end of the first episode a conspiracy-theory loner DJ has also fallen victim to James Frain (whom we wouldn't want on our doorstep on a dark night either) who knew the murdered family and is investigating a secret society who have, by way of organ pipes that can't be heard by human ears, conquered death.  Yes really.  It would appear that the dead girl, Simm's wife Amy (Mira Sorvino) and Madison are inhabited by other souls, long past their due dates.  As with all of these wonderful schemes, like time travel for instance, there are glitches.  Not all of these immortal souls get along.  Frain (yes, he's one) is chasing after little Madison, who is now partially possessed by Marcus, a criminally-inclined man.  Amy is turning Japanese, literally.

It's intriguing, but whereas something like France's recent 'The Returned' was elegant in its opacity, and focused on the identifiable pain of people faced with the simultaneously sublime and terrible - the return of dead loved ones, just as they were when they disappeared - this is more unpleasant than disturbing.  Frain is your archetypal cold-blooded assassin, presumably all but undefeatable having had hundreds of years to perfect his methods of violence.  The returned were only vaguely aware that something was wrong, and that the something was them; here, the inhabitors of others' bodies are intent on survival.  Even John Simm's American accent isn't as scary as we expected.  We're always hopeful that series based on books will have more coherent plots than screenplays that have other agendas and may have been hastily put together, but we shall have to wait and see.