It’s a few weeks now since I watched Cambridge Spies, so it’s starting to fade in my mind and this won’t be a proper review – but I wanted to write a brief posting to say I enjoyed it and think it will have a lot of appeal to fellow costume drama fans.
I didn’t watch the series when it was first shown on the BBC, because I think for some reason I got it into my head that it was a docu-drama, a genre I find hard to like – but, despite the announcement at the beginning of each of the four episodes that this is a true story with some changes, it’s a fully-realised drama without that “docu” feeling about it.
The director is Tim Fywell, who made the movie of Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, and it has the same sort of breathtakingly beautiful photography and the feeling of a vanished world – especially the opening episode, set at Cambridge between the wars, which has something of the languorous atmosphere of Brideshead Revisited. The script is by Peter Moffat. I don’t think I’ve seen much of his other work, but he scripted last year’s Einstein and Eddington – another one I sadly managed to miss.
All the four lead actors are excellent – Toby Stephens as Kim Philby, Tom Hollander as Guy Burgess, Rupert Penry-Jones as Donald Maclean and Samuel West as Anthony Blunt. I kept changing my mind about which one of them was giving the best performance and in the end decided it really didn’t matter – the contrasts between their different personalities are what makes it. The drama traces how their idealism gets them hooked into something they can’t get out of, and also weaves in their personal lives and love affairs, gay and straight. And it looks at how many of their relationships are sacrificed to the cause of Russia, even when they start to stop believing in that cause.
To be honest, I thought the opening episode was the best, or most convincing, part – as they got into their spying careers, some scenes seemed so unlikely that I found myself thinking, surely it couldn’t have happened quite like that. But then, the reality of this story is so improbable that very possibly some of the parts I was raising my eyebrows at were the things that were based on truth!
Toby Stephens in a scene from Cambridge Spies
I saw Cambridge Spies on TV, when it was repeated on an obscure satellite station in the UK, but would like to see the background documentary included on the DVD box set to find out just how much is true, so perhaps I’ll borrow the bonus disc from a DVD club – or weaken and buy the set.:)
I don’t think this series is quite up there with Another Country, Julian Mitchell’s brilliant drama based on the schooldays of Guy Burgess, which I saw and loved on stage back in the early 1980s (I also like the film version) – but it’s still fascinating to watch.
Thanks for reviewing this Judy! It’s one that had caught my attention recently when I realized it was based on true events. The cast looks like this one is worth watching!
I think you would find it interesting, Charley. The cast are all excellent. Hope you get to see it!
I suppose the difference between Jane Eyre, Emma and Pride and Prejudice on one hand, and Cambridge Spies on the other, is important. Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt were real people, virtually in our own era, not distant romantic figures from the legendary past.
Idealism was destroyed, families broken up, careers ended, friends distrusted.
I too found the drama well acted, with beautiful photography and the feeling of a vanished world.
I said the same about Dean Spanley when I reviewed the film. Sad and strange, but beautifully crafted.
Hels
Art and Architecture, mainly
Thank you for visiting and commenting, Hels. I do agree there are important differences between this drama and some of the others I’ve discussed on this blog – the nearness in time and wreckage of real lives, as you say. But I’ve always been interested in looking at a wide range of costume/historical dramas, not just adaptations of classic books, though those do hold a particular fascination for me.
I’m sorry I left it too long after viewing to write a proper review of this series, but I do agree that the focus on how lives, relationships and careers were destroyed is powerfully done, and that much of the series is heartbreaking.
I haven’t seen ‘Dean Spanley’ as yet but would like to do – I already wanted to get hold of it after reading ‘Arthur and George’, and am now keener to do so than ever after going over to your blog to read your review.
The four men are extraordinary actors; I too would not be able to differentiate which would give the finest performance. The actors are as central as anyone in making a film great.
As to the reality or romance of these figures in history near us or the figures in fiction further off, philosophically once people are dead, we cannot know them beyond what’s written and that is often wide of the mark, especially in such glamorized politics. I’ve heard it argued that there is little difference between Mary Queen of Scots who lived and now exists in biographies and Mary Queen of Scots who now exists in novels.
The other argument one can make is the old one about universal truths caught up in the imagination. That’s part of the defense of poetry. I am not sure I believe it, but it’s worth bringing up, as in surely Scott’s Old Mortality has more to tell us than Hume’s history of kings in the 18th century. Remember Jane Austen on partial, prejudiced and whatever it is historians :)
Ellen
Thank you, Ellen – I would recommend the series if you ever get a chance to see it, as the cast really do make it worthwhile.
I do agree that there is a lot of fictionalisation/imagination in biographies as well as novels – you inevitably get the personality of the writer coming across as well as that of the subject. I’d like to say more but it’s late and I am too tired now to make any sense! However, thank you very much again for commenting.:)
I MUST GET THE DVD! I absolutely want to see it. I’ll have a look at Amazon.UK.com. Thanks Judy!