Rating: - Excellent
I watched this after reading The Company: A Novel of the CIA by Robert Littell, which follows a similar theme and includes the same group of people. Must say this is an excellent DVD, excellent acting and everything else that has already been mentioned!
Rating: - Brilliant but scenes missing?
Five stars without hesitation had it not been for my feeling that their were scenes missing. I could have sworn that the Queen spoke to her Head of Art about Titian and spoke of fakes and deceit to this key Cambridge spy but not in this DVD edition. Compelling viewing in the light of recent events in the evolution of State control and accountability. The script is dripping with insight not always black and white. The characters have a dream-like quality to them, a vivid intensity so often lacking in humans these days. Highly recommended.
Rating: - Television Drama at its Best!
At the risk of having my name added to the non-existent list of a 'non-existent' organization, I strongly recommend director Tim Fywell and writer Peter Moffat's "Cambridge Spies" as television drama at its finest. The portrayals are brilliant: the subtle nuances of Toby Stephens' Philby; the ambiguity of Samuel West's Blunt; the vulnerability of Rupert Penry-Jones' Maclean; and finally, the brilliance of Tom Hollander's Burgess. Hollander's portrayal of the outrageous original is so convincing that when one reads Guy Burgess' actual quoted words, one 'hears' Tom Hollander.
Moody and suspenseful, the drama dwells on a theme worthy of Sophoclean tragedy: the conflict between the obligations to oneself (friends and family) and the obligations to the State. Each of the characters, tragically flawed, reaches what seems to be the pinnacle of success, only to suffer a reversal of fortune and be cast down by outside events (here, the intrusion of the Cold War). The tragedy in Mr. Moffat's drama rests not in the fact that Philby, Blunt, Maclean and Burgess spied for the other side. These are mere plot points in an Aristotelian sense (although the repercussions on the State cannot be denied). The tragedy derives from the fact that as each man is compelled to betray his ideals, friends or family, he recognizes the enormity of that betrayal.
We can only hope that Mr. Fywell and Moffat are planning a second series (The film-makers have already hinted at Philby's affair in Moscow with Melinda Maclean.). There are at least four more absorbing episodes: Philby's relentless grilling in London by MI5, his subsequent adventures in Beirut, his defection and miserable reception in Moscow, where he, like Burgess and Maclean, had to face the even colder reality of Russian Winters and the frost-bitten remnants of his utopian dreams, and finally Blunt's secret confession, promise of immunity, and eventual unmasking in London. Then the tragedy will be complete.
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