TV critic Mark Lawson, who's often on the Newsnight review show, identifies the plethora of spy-related shows that UK TV viewers can look forward to this autumn: the new season of Homeland, a new five-parter called London Spy which - as Lawson notes - immediately draws comparisons perhaps with London Match, the first Bernard Samson novel; plus there's a new adaptation of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent.
The future BBC SS-GB adaption is also referenced but is incorrect, in that filming is starting this year but it is not scheduled for broadcast in 2015. Sadly, we have to wait a little longer!
In the days when le Carre and Deighton wrote their novels, the setting was the Cold War. The CIA and men’s machinations in that organisation were always the stuff for many movies, but in America, the private and police detectives provided the substance for many TV series in 1970s and 1980s-Rockford Files, Barnaby Jones, Kojak, Columbo and Hawaii Five-O come to mind. For Americans the Cold War Theatre was in Europe, where they thought albeit mistakenly that the spies and the CIA should be active, and hence anything related to spies and espionage for them was always going to be in Europe. I used to be very surprised by the ignorance of many Americans about their own CIA, espionage, the spies on both sides and of course the Cold War. Hence, there were very few TV series on espionage produced in those days there. In later decades,with the advent of the cable TV, sci-fi series such as the X-Files were attracting viewers. It was so different here in Britain with the proximity of the divided Berlin, and Brits being more interested on matters of espionage. Now in this century with terrorism touching their soil, the TV companies in America have realised that the CIA , the spies and the espionage have become very attractive topics , and hence the popularity of the Homeland seasons. In Britain, I suspect that some production companies feel that there is still life left in the topics of spies and espionage, and rerun of spy-related shows and some new ones could be a worthwhile venture. I am of the feeling that the spy-related shows should depict the contemporary topic of terrorism to be successful . I am not a fan of Guardian, and the articles there in my opinion are often way off the reality.
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