Legacy

The trouble with Cold War spy thrillers is that the genre is a minefield of cliches.  Mr. Le Carre has a lot to answer for.  Paula Milne has adapted Alan Judd's novel of the same name into a 90-minute prime-time BBC2 thriller which throws Judd's hero Charles Thoroughgood (based on Judd himself, perhaps?  He shares his army and diplomatic background.) in at the deep end of MI6 during the dark days of 1970s Britain.  He's given the task of 'turning' his old Oxford friend, Russian diplomat Viktor Koslov (Andrew Scott, aka Moriarty), only to find on making contact that Viktor has a card up his own sleeve which calls Charles's bluff in a very personal way.

For fans of 1970s nostalgia there are the cars, the blackouts and the abominable fashions and hairstyles (but only, we note, sported by peripheral characters: MI6 weren't so undercover that they grew their hair or wore kipper ties, clearly) and there's also the inevitable love interest, in the form of unhappily married fellow spy Anna March (Romola Garai who, let's face it, adds class to everything she appears in).

Exploring his own father's alleged betrayal, his feelings for Anna and his assignment with Viktor via the latter's prostitute lover Eva (Olivia Grant, slightly miscast as a 24-year-old), Charles ploughs a leisurely furrow accompanied by a jerkily zooming camera which had the effect of distracting from the dialogue.  Is this lack of subtlety in filming in vogue?  We hope it passes.  Luckily for him and us, Charles has solid support from Simon Russell Beale as senior operative Hookey.  SRB does not grace our small screens often, and his every appearance is a memorable event.  When he is allied to Geraldine James as stalwart Martha, there's no switching off.

Perfectly good of its kind, but not landmark television in the way of, say, 'Tinker Tailor...' or 'Smiley...'.  Perhaps it's the fact that the novel was published in 2012 and this was made in the same year.  Le Carre's stories were, after all, just about contemporary to the Cold War, albeit at a late stage, and there was, if not a grubbiness, then at least a seediness to proceedings.  In the UK we are used to equating the 1970s with the down-at-heel, which is maybe why James Bond didn't work so well in that decade (and he was mostly abroad, and let's not mention Roger Moore).  Glamour, so long associated with espionage, was largely absent from the average Briton's shores, having fled with the 60s and only returning, to a degree, with the garish 80s.  Somehow these pretty young things in their stylish clothes with their cool attitudes seem at odds with both the era and the rather workaday image we now have of the security services.  Beautifully moody shots of rainy alleys and gloomy seasides add style, but not substance.

The Politician's Husband

Remember Trevor Eve and Juliet Stevenson battling it out over his wandering eye for Minnie Driver?  We'll let you off if not, since it was a long time ago and was only watchable for the titular wife's steely, heartbroken revenge on the man she'd trusted.

Late in the day, Paula Milne has penned a sort of companion piece to the original, although it starts with the better premise of political skullduggery rather than an old-fashioned sex scandal. Whereas the original had an immediately sympathetic character, however, we are introduced to  'political golden couple' Aidan Hoynes and Freya Gardner (David Tennant and Emily Watson) in the middle of their attempted takeover of power.  It proves unsuccessful, largely thanks to the betrayal of best friend Bruce (Brutus?) Babbish (Ed Stoppard).

The drama opens with a pretentious Latin quote about the corruption of the best being the worst, so presumably we are meant to feel that Aidan is a tragically undermined would-be hero, but regardless of your stance on immigration, there is little evidence to back this up.  He sits bored and listless while his constituents relate their problems and is happy to deny to the public that his resignation is anything more than an act of principle.  The Macbeths had at least a prediction of certain success to excuse them - political murder being almost as bad as the physical for ambition-driven ministers - but what appears as the bud of an excuse in Macbeth - a lost child - is full-blown here.  Aidan's patient dad (Jack Shepherd) spells it out for us, and directly to his son, that he threw himself into the "cesspit" of Westminster because his son was diagnosed with Asperger's.  Oh and there's the crack in his bedroom ceiling he spends his nights staring at, so we can only assume he hasn't claimed for extravagant redecoration on expenses....

We are meant to believe that Freya is the pawn of both her husband, to whom she has always taken a back seat, and Bruce, who persuades the PM to appoint her to the DWP as a final snub to his defeated rival.  Freya, however, is already getting a taste for No.10, where she seems strangely to be completely unfamiliar with her surroundings, and she too publicly betrays her husband in a highly unlikely interview by that well-known political bloodhound, Kirsty Wark.  Jeremy Paxman must have had a prior engagement, and by allowing herself to be pinioned on a subject relevant to her personal life, rather than her job, Freya shows herself no able politician.

Clearly this is headed in the multiple-betrayal, "we ruined our family" direction, but do we care?  This portrays the so-called corridors of power as riven with individuals who wouldn't know the Seven Principles of Public Life if they came and threw 2009 Chateau Neuf du Pape all over them.  Uncannily accurate yes, but crucially unengaging of our sympathies.

The Night Watch (spoilers!)

Aha!  Just as we get mired in cops and more cops, along comes this.  More historical lesbian shenanigans courtesy of Sarah Waters.  I know how un-PC that sounds, but... frankly it’s what distinguishes it from several other dramas about historical shenanigans.  This time it’s WWII and ‘anything goes’ and, judging from this, frequently went, without giving a damn.  First, we like the setting, we like the cast.

We won't discuss merits relative to the original novel, except to say that without literary and descriptive prose, and squeezed into 90 minutes, this is ultimately little more than a sexual merry-go-round told in semi-backwards fashion, a la Pinter's 'Betrayal'.  Kay, played by Anna Maxwell Martin, helpfully bookends as narrator, telling us we're joining partway through.

So, leaving sexual orientation out altogether, and taken chronologically, character A leaves character B for character C, who then leaves character A for character B.  With me so far?  Character B then turfs character C.  Meanwhile, a colleague of character C - character D - has a brother - character E - who is in love with character F, who, of-course, falls for character D. 

To reiterate, the cast are very good.  Anna Maxwell Martin, Claire Foy, Jodie Whittaker, Harry Treadaway, JJ Feild, Claudie Blakley, Kenneth Cranham, Liam Garrigan and Anna Wilson-Jones are all on fine form as frail, shell-shocked human beings, coping or not coping in their own way.  The costumes and sets are finely detailed, down to visible plumes of breath in cold wartime bedrooms.  However, it didn't really need the badly mocked-up shots of London burning, or St. Pauls by night, to set the scene.  Also, the music was distracting.  It sounded very weepy-melodrama and intruded on scenes unnecessarily (so they're unhappy: we get it).  And did we really need the rewind device to drag us back in time?  It did take us back - straight to the 80s and all that messing about with the VCR.

No TWNHs but one cliched moment when Kay, retrieving dead children after a bombing raid, stares at a pile of rubble with a rag doll on top.  To paraphrase a scene in 'The Wire' where they're watching war footage: "Oh no, not the doll again.  Can't he leave it out?  There's always the damn doll...."

Has it made us want to read the book?  Not really, despite having read and enjoyed others of her novels (Ali).  Perhaps that's the acid test for an adaptation?