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.

What Remains

If you are feeling a gaping hole where a depressing drama should be after the end of 'Southcliffe', look no further than 'What Remains', BBC1's new four-part offering for Sunday nights.  Len Harper (David Threlfall, occasionally sporting Frank Gallagher's mumble), is that most-dramatised of detectives, the lonely cop facing an imminent, empty retirement.  Then he gets called to an old house, divided into flats, in which a mummified body has been found in the attic.

We can't accuse this of lacking realism: the house and its basement flat owner bear more than a passing resemblance to the case of Joanna Yeates, while the scenario of a resident in a block dying and going unnoticed for years is spookily similar to the tragic end of Joyce Vincent.  Basgallop weaves together these two premises in a suspenseful hour that introduces the late Melissa Young (Jessica Gunning, a staple of 'Law & Order: UK' and a standout in 'White Heat') and her unfriendly neighbours in the gloomy house.  Incredulity aside about the assumption that she'd just left - it could happen and did to Joyce V - it did seem odd that the heavily pregnant Ms Khan would shin up a ladder into the loft, or opt to stay in her new flat which had a very unsavoury leak in the ceiling.  And the line about the smell being hardly noticeable wasn't very convincing either.

Shaping up to be gripping, even if the thought that we are all so easily forgotten is a depressing one and says nothing positive about our fellows.