Have you watched ‘A Spy Among Friends’? The series on ITV? Its been on for a while but I just started. As is my way. Its the story of Kim Philby, the Russian spy in MI5 just and after the war. And it has pedigree. Written by Ben McIntyre, the best writer of non-fiction in the whole library. And a stellar cast including Adrian Edmonson, NOT as Vivian from The Young Ones, with studs in his forehead, but as an ‘older statesman’ of the secret services, all posh vowels and dinner jackets. Bloody sell-out.

And it is ‘dark’. But like really dark. You can’t see much on the screen because its all filmed in the shadows and the fog and in rooms with no lighting. Because that’s how people lived in 1951 and spies and agents hung out in the darkest places they could find. So they could… spy… and… agent. And its fairly quiet too, as they all mumble, with plums in each cheek, as everyone posh had in 1951, and whisper a lot because you wouldn’t want the Russians/Americans/baddies to hear secrets.

Basically, you can’t hear a fucking word nor see anything at all.

Yet it is compelling and wonderful. Damian Lewis plays a good spy, Nicholas Elliot, Philby’s best mate and possibly the man who let Philby escape to Russia (I’m only on episode 3, so I’m not in a position to offer spoilers. Or you know I would). Anna Maxwell Martin plays a fictional character who interrogates Elliot to find out what happened, and she is totally fabulous, as only really plain and dowdy women can be in a very powerful role set in a time when women just made the tea.

Philby was the last of the ‘Cambridge 5’, with Burgess and McLean and… the other 2. They all went to Cambridge, slept with little boys, then became communists, Russian sympathisers and worked for MI5 as ‘double agents’, giving away our secrets!

But its a really good watch. A Rolex amongst the drossy Timexes of TV.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx