The BBC has a great knack for producing great programmes and then airing them on BBC 2 where they go below the radar of most of the viewing public. Two such series were Zen and The Hour; great series both but ultimately scrapped because they failed to draw in the big viewing figures needed to justify the production costs.
This week will see the final instalment of a six part first series of The Game, an original 70s set espionage thriller in which members of MI5 battle to thwart a Soviet plot to activate sleeper agents and the mysterious Operation Glass. In 1972 a small, close knit team in MI5 led by a somewhat suspect codenamed Daddy, played by Brian Cox (the actor not the scientist) are at the heart of the UK’s Cold War fight against the Soviet hordes. Field agent Joe Lambe (Tom Hughes) is approached by a Russian agent called Arkady who wants to defect to the West and offers MI5 information. Joe is a man who may or may not be trustworthy as he has just been exchanged with the Soviets after being captured in Poland. However, was he captured, was he defecting or is he a double or even triple agent? One thing is certain, he manages to make a series of roll neck sweaters in those dodgy shades of brown unique to the 70’s look really cool. Joe is paired with a reluctant, by the book, morally straight and yet terribly naive Special Branch policeman Jim Fenchurch (Shaun Dooley) in the days where the secret services had no legal power to detain or arrest, and technical expert Jonathan (Alan Montag, familiar to any fans of Sherlock) who plants all the listening devices and records all the conversations of friend and foe alike. Their hierarchy is shared between the fiercely ambitious Bobby (Paul Ritter) and Sarah (Victoria Hamilton) who is Jonathan’s wife. Joe is a complex character, a loner who keeps things close to his chest, he is still recovering from the loss of his lover Yulia (Zana Marjanovic) who he saw being murdered by a mysterious and deadly apple peeling KGB killer known as Odin (Yevgeny Sitokhin). When Russian agent Arkady offers to give MI5 intelligence of a secret and world changing Soviet mission, Operation Glass, Joe and Odin’s paths cross again, giving Joe the chance to avenge Yulia’s death. However, the Soviets seem to be one step ahead each time and it soon becomes clear that either Arkady is a double agent or there is a mole within MI5, but who? The list of suspects is small: could it be Daddy, infatuated with a Chinese ballerina; Bobby, frustrated with his limited opportunities of advancement and constantly thwarted by Daddy and a society that still criminalises and stigmatises homosexuality; Sarah, an ambitious woman held back by a male oriented world; or Joe himself? The series is a slow burner with many twists and turns before it suddenly catches on fire in episode six when the mole is revealed and the true Operation Glass becomes clear. I really like all the period details; the Brutalised architecture, the clothing and the cars all set to the period background of the strike induced power cuts, the public information films about how to deal with a nuclear strike, the American airbases being secretly armed with nuclear weapons on UK soil and the rivalries between MI5 and their counterparts south of the river. I really hope that it doesn’t suffer the same fate as many of the other excellent BBC series that have gone before. You can still catch up on BBC IPlayer and the series will shortly be available on DVD and Blu-ray.
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