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Oct. 8th, 2023 09:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsDuring osprey_archer's visit we've been zooming through A Spy Among Friends, the recent television show based on Ben Macintyre's book on Kim Philby, at the rate of about an episode a night.
This is a show About An All-Encompassing Friendship: Guy Pearce is Kim Philby (double agent) and Damian Lewis is Nicholas Elliott (betrayed spy best friend) and we're right in the immediate aftermath of Philby's exposure and subsequent flight to the Soviet Union. The plot is everyone, including MI5, the KGB, and the CIA, trying to figure out What Exactly These Lads Were Playing At such that Philby managed to get away and what he's planning to actually do in Moscow now that he's there; the story is -- well, I will let Damian Lewis speak for himself: "Elliott is confronted by his greatest friend, his soulmate, his lover to all intents and purposes, platonically, who betrayed him and his country." It's Men Who Are Bad At Having Feelings Having Feelings Time! we love to see it!
The whole show is extremely fun but perhaps my favorite episode is the very first one, which starts right after the Elliott and Philby breakup as they are both suspiciously debriefed by their respective sides about the contents of their own grueling debrief in Beirut, 36 hours on tape plus three minutes on the balcony where nobody could hear them. (For anyone watching after us, we propose a drinking game to mark any time someone plays on tape or flashes back to Philby's line on welcoming Elliott into The Fateful Apartment, "I rather thought it would be you.")
On Elliott's side, his debriefer is a working-class MI5 agent played by Anna Maxwell Martin -- the one character fully invented for the show and, as it will transpire, the third protagonist. I always love to see Anna Maxwell Martin on my screen, and it is incredibly satisfying to watch her leverage steely pleasantries to cut through walls of obfuscation and gamesmanship -- "well, I've got to get a wriggle on or I'm going to miss my train" as she stonewalls a CIA agent out of her house" -- and Damian Lewis is also exceptionally good at what he does and IMO the show is genuinely at its best when it's just the two of them verbally fencing in a room, which, again, is most of the first episode, which is why it's the best one. I could have watched this for hours. "You did watch this for hours," pointed outosprey_archer and genarti, when I expressed this sentiment. Well, I could have watched it for many more hours!
Then Nicholas Elliott goes to the theater with his wife and has a bit of quiet weeping while hallucinating Kim Philby singing "I'm Sorry We Drifted Apart" at him from the stage and we all shrieked with laughter at the television from the couch. This also is a high point of the first episode.
I will say that the show is so, so kind to Nicholas Elliott and credits him with perhaps significantly more competence and intentionality than he deserves, but it does (as demonstrated) also let him be quite pathetic and also Damian Lewis is (again) doing an extremely good job on the screen so one doesn't mind it. We were very impressed with his wide away of horrible little half-smiles; "doing a great job of demonstrating a man who's been speaking perfect RP for so many years that it's permanently warped his mouth," saidgenarti, and immediately started campaigning for him to play Lord Peter Wimsey on the strength of it.
Guy Pearce is also doing a great job of being a complete sad sack as Philby but he's SUCH a sad sack that it's generally less fun to watch when he's not actively doing his breakup scenes with Elliott. We were appalled to see him completely fail to speak Russian on the screen, and were convinced for several episodes that he was faking -- "this man was a double agent for decades and head of the Soviet Division of MI6? SURELY?" -- and then through extensive Googling found out that this is TRUE and he NEVER LEARNED IT. What a perfect indictment!
Aside from the beginning, the other best part of the show is the end, which also had us shrieking on the couch in which a miserably depressed and lonely Philby writes Elliott a wistful letter inviting him to a meeting and asking whether they can't possibly renew their friendship In Spite Of Politics.
Elliott, in response, sneaks into East Berlin, bringing along the Friendship Umbrella that Philby gave him many years ago -- goes to the designated meetup point -- looks, through the window, at Philby sitting and waiting at the bar -- and then LEAVES WITHOUT SPEAKING TO HIM. When Philby runs out into the street, he only finds the abandoned Friendship Umbrella, the coup de grace demonstrating that Elliott is so incredibly over-and-yet-not-over Philby that he's willing to cross the Iron Curtain just to deliver the most final of fuck-yous. Take BACK your mink, take BACK your pearls! NO ONE has ever won a breakup like Nicholas Elliott! I, personally, do not believe that in real life Nicholas Elliott won his breakup anything like this thoroughly, but my God is it fun to see on-screen.
osprey_archer's visit we've been zooming through A Spy Among Friends, the recent television show based on Ben Macintyre's book on Kim Philby, at the rate of about an episode a night. This is a show About An All-Encompassing Friendship: Guy Pearce is Kim Philby (double agent) and Damian Lewis is Nicholas Elliott (betrayed spy best friend) and we're right in the immediate aftermath of Philby's exposure and subsequent flight to the Soviet Union. The plot is everyone, including MI5, the KGB, and the CIA, trying to figure out What Exactly These Lads Were Playing At such that Philby managed to get away and what he's planning to actually do in Moscow now that he's there; the story is -- well, I will let Damian Lewis speak for himself: "Elliott is confronted by his greatest friend, his soulmate, his lover to all intents and purposes, platonically, who betrayed him and his country." It's Men Who Are Bad At Having Feelings Having Feelings Time! we love to see it!
The whole show is extremely fun but perhaps my favorite episode is the very first one, which starts right after the Elliott and Philby breakup as they are both suspiciously debriefed by their respective sides about the contents of their own grueling debrief in Beirut, 36 hours on tape plus three minutes on the balcony where nobody could hear them. (For anyone watching after us, we propose a drinking game to mark any time someone plays on tape or flashes back to Philby's line on welcoming Elliott into The Fateful Apartment, "I rather thought it would be you.")
On Elliott's side, his debriefer is a working-class MI5 agent played by Anna Maxwell Martin -- the one character fully invented for the show and, as it will transpire, the third protagonist. I always love to see Anna Maxwell Martin on my screen, and it is incredibly satisfying to watch her leverage steely pleasantries to cut through walls of obfuscation and gamesmanship -- "well, I've got to get a wriggle on or I'm going to miss my train" as she stonewalls a CIA agent out of her house" -- and Damian Lewis is also exceptionally good at what he does and IMO the show is genuinely at its best when it's just the two of them verbally fencing in a room, which, again, is most of the first episode, which is why it's the best one. I could have watched this for hours. "You did watch this for hours," pointed out
osprey_archer and genarti, when I expressed this sentiment. Well, I could have watched it for many more hours! Then Nicholas Elliott goes to the theater with his wife and has a bit of quiet weeping while hallucinating Kim Philby singing "I'm Sorry We Drifted Apart" at him from the stage and we all shrieked with laughter at the television from the couch. This also is a high point of the first episode.
I will say that the show is so, so kind to Nicholas Elliott and credits him with perhaps significantly more competence and intentionality than he deserves, but it does (as demonstrated) also let him be quite pathetic and also Damian Lewis is (again) doing an extremely good job on the screen so one doesn't mind it. We were very impressed with his wide away of horrible little half-smiles; "doing a great job of demonstrating a man who's been speaking perfect RP for so many years that it's permanently warped his mouth," said
genarti, and immediately started campaigning for him to play Lord Peter Wimsey on the strength of it. Guy Pearce is also doing a great job of being a complete sad sack as Philby but he's SUCH a sad sack that it's generally less fun to watch when he's not actively doing his breakup scenes with Elliott. We were appalled to see him completely fail to speak Russian on the screen, and were convinced for several episodes that he was faking -- "this man was a double agent for decades and head of the Soviet Division of MI6? SURELY?" -- and then through extensive Googling found out that this is TRUE and he NEVER LEARNED IT. What a perfect indictment!
Aside from the beginning, the other best part of the show is the end, which also had us shrieking on the couch in which a miserably depressed and lonely Philby writes Elliott a wistful letter inviting him to a meeting and asking whether they can't possibly renew their friendship In Spite Of Politics.
Elliott, in response, sneaks into East Berlin, bringing along the Friendship Umbrella that Philby gave him many years ago -- goes to the designated meetup point -- looks, through the window, at Philby sitting and waiting at the bar -- and then LEAVES WITHOUT SPEAKING TO HIM. When Philby runs out into the street, he only finds the abandoned Friendship Umbrella, the coup de grace demonstrating that Elliott is so incredibly over-and-yet-not-over Philby that he's willing to cross the Iron Curtain just to deliver the most final of fuck-yous. Take BACK your mink, take BACK your pearls! NO ONE has ever won a breakup like Nicholas Elliott! I, personally, do not believe that in real life Nicholas Elliott won his breakup anything like this thoroughly, but my God is it fun to see on-screen.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-08 04:56 pm (UTC)I thought of the Abandoned Friendship Umbrella as being a twist on when Karla drops Ann's lighter that he picked up from Smiley all those decades before, when Smiley finally gets him. The Abandoned Friendship Umbrella is so much pissier, though!
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Date: 2023-10-09 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-08 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-09 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-08 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-09 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-09 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-08 07:24 pm (UTC)More than one person has told me for years that I would like Damian Lewis and I have almost never seen him in anything to know it, but this miniseries sounds like, if I can find it, a good place to start.
[edit] I did enjoy him in Dream Horse (2020) and I believe him to have been good in it, but he was playing the one character with any shadows in a crowd-pleaser, it was probably inevitable.
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Date: 2023-10-09 01:30 am (UTC)It's apparently available on anything that has MGM Plus as an add-on. Vudu apparently has it, I guess? So does Amazon Prime, which is what we watched it on; I let Amazon give me a 30-day free trial recently. I'm happy to share my login, if you think you're likely to watch it in the next two weeks or so! (After that I'm going to cancel my Prime subscription before they charge me for it.)
I do really think you would like it. There are quite a lot of sovay characters, and a lot of really amazing acting work going on all around.
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Date: 2023-10-09 02:14 am (UTC)As
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Date: 2023-10-09 01:40 am (UTC)Another thing that really impressed me about this show (so many things impressed me about this show! I had a great time) was how they didn't do any graphic torture or beating, and the (several) deaths were only barely onscreen, usually with just an offscreen gunshot and perhaps a tiny splash of blood to make it clear what had happened. But it did make it clear, and was unusually concerned with showing the human cost of all these spy games, alongside the interpersonal dynamics of the people playing them.
Also, Elliott's wife. Anna Maxwell Martin's Lily Thomas was a joy and a delight, but I was thrilled that she wasn't the only woman onscreen, nor the only woman getting to do things, nor the only woman who gets to occasionally call Elliott on his BS; Elizabeth Elliott (show version) was a great and nuanced character for her screentime, and in a lesser show she wouldn't have gotten to be.
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Date: 2023-10-09 02:16 am (UTC)And yeah, I also really appreciated the emphasis on the actual costs, as well as that the show had several human women in it; I also loved Thomas' coworker whose name I have forgotten but who is constantly calling Thomas on her bullshit at the same time that Thomas is calling Elliott on his.
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Date: 2023-10-10 01:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-10 01:09 am (UTC)Somewhere, Nicholas Elliot is smiling a new little horrible smile, never before seen by man.
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Date: 2023-10-10 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-10 10:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-09 06:41 pm (UTC)Oh, same. For me, there is no premise more exciting than "Smart people at odds for whatever reason TALKING." Give me a talking movie/tv show any day!
"doing a great job of demonstrating a man who's been speaking perfect RP for so many years that it's permanently warped his mouth," said [personal profile] genarti,
Genius!
and then through extensive Googling found out that this is TRUE and he NEVER LEARNED IT. What a perfect indictment!
Right? That is somehow so perfect!
Take BACK your mink, take BACK your pearls! NO ONE has ever won a breakup like Nicholas Elliott! I, personally, do not believe that in real life Nicholas Elliott won his breakup anything like this thoroughly, but my God is it fun to see on-screen.
Indeed!
This show was a good time!