Spy Shows Explore Shadows and Half Lights

By ROB PATTERSON

I’ve been quite captivated with the espionage genre in books, films and TV series, both fiction and fact, ever since I saw the first James Bond movie Dr. No at age eight and began reading Ian Fleming’s novels. To wit, all these years later I find that the British are the reigning masters of the genre.

So when I ran across the five-episode BBC series London Spy on Netflix, I almost immediately began streaming it in binge mode. Especially after discovering its star is Ben Wishaw, arguably the finest and most winning English actor of his generation who I’ve enjoyed in the TV series The Hour, Todd Haynes’ brilliantly imaginative Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There, and in another spy context as a clever choice to play secret service armorer and master of gadgets Q in the last two Bond films.

London Spy was nothing like I expected, and in the best way possible. It’s also graced by such other superb acting talents as Jim Broadbent and Charlotte Rampling, and Wishaw’s performance is superb.

Its story originates in a chance meeting and subsequent gay love affair between Danny (Wishaw), a hedonistic party lad, and Alex, who leads Danny to believe he’s a banker, though its his cover as an MI5 operative. When Alex turns up murdered, it launches Danny on a quest to discover what happened that travels a winding if not twisted road of deception, discovery and the damage that can be done to others by people, friends, families and organizations, even with best of intentions, and at times quite unintentionally.

Even though Broadbent told The Guardian that “it’s not a gay story … It’s about these particular guys, who happen to be gay, who are in the midst of this maelstrom of an unfolding tale,” the thick homosexual skein throughout the story is both courageous and apropos. Spies and intelligence work are wrapped almost like a mummy in secrets. Being gay, which was illegal in the UK until 1967, has only recently and maybe even not yet fully come out as well as into the mainstream society light from its long existence as an underground demimonde.

The plot is rife with riddles wrapped in mysteries inside enigmas. Yet at the same time it’s also driven by the very basic quest to find and keep love in one’s life.

Some critics found its pacing a bit glacial. But I have to wonder if too many of us viewers, myself sometimes included, have become conditioned to crave big action, drama, booms and kapows that are often (and usually rightly) the tools that tell stories in a way that captivates audiences. But there’s also something subtly dramatic in the less active way real life often proceeds.

I found London Spy instead pleasingly tonal in a manner that befits a good mystery. Much of the story unfolds within shadows and half-light, an apt metaphor for the world of espionage.

And it recasts if not upends the usual tropes of spy stories by the way we are led into that world. And even if that theme permeates the plot, it eschews the usual thriller to be much more a chiller. Yet there’s also moments of tender warmth as we’re given glances of the love that blossomed between Danny and Alex, two souls in need of that bond and balm. And in the friendship between Danny and his older gay friend, mentor and father figure Scottie (played by Broadbent), who also has a background in the intelligence services.

Ultimately the tragedy of losing Alex brings purpose to Danny’s aimless life. And the way in which this intelligent show lingers after it ends indicates how it has masterful aspects that make watching it a worthy pastime.

Populist Picks

TV Series: Fleming; The Man Who Would Be Bond – Frankly, the life of James Bond creator Ian Fleming wasn’t one that calls to be told in TV series fashion. But with some gilding and fabrication applied to his intelligence activities during and after the Second World War, here it is. The BBC show is a sumptuous period piece that’s all facade for an empty vessel, alas.

TV Documentary: The Spymasters – Twelve onetime CIA directors and others discuss the agency’s role in the wake of 9/11, during which time it has shifted from primarily an intelligence gathering outfit to a more active strike force role. There’s much justification of torture tactics and collateral damage within its operations yet not enough definitive strategies for how “the company” can best protect the nation and address threats to it in the age of terrorism. Narration by Mandy Patinkin, who plays a CIA bigwig on the Showtime series Homeland, adds an interesting touch to the Showtime documentary.

Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.

From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2018

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