British spies season: more details emerge

22 August 2006 Rob Buckley Events, News, UK TV 1 Comment

British Spies season
I gave the BBC press office a call yesterday to find out what was going to be in BBC4’s British Spies season. Well, I emailed them: they don’t take calls. Eventually, ‘Clive’ got back to me: at the moment, details are a bit sketchy apparently and they’re not quite sure yet. He’ll email me some more information soon, he promised.

So, to find out more, we’re going to have to use an advanced investigative journalist’s tool: the Radio Times.

‘British Spies season’ starts this Saturday at 9.15pm with the movie The Human Factor, followed by the beginning of a repeat run of Cambridge Spies at 11pm, which will carry on until Tuesday 29th. Tuesday also sees a Time Shift documentary on British spies at 10pm.

There’s a Spooks episode on Wednesday at 9.30 – probably that controversial one where that woman we all thought was going to be the main lead gets killed by some bad people – followed by a very welcome repeat run of the seven-part Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy at 10.30pm. A documentary on John Le Carré’s real-life career as a spy is on Thursday, followed by a similar documentary on Friday about director Leslie Woodhead.

Billion Dollar Brain, aka ‘the rubbish Harry Palmer movie’, joins the season on Saturday, while Sunday sees yet another repeat run, this time of Ashenden, Somerset Maugham’s collection of classic First World War spy stories.

Monday the 4th has a documentary called British Spies, featuring Stella Rimington, Daphne Park, David Shayler, John Le Carré, Charlie Higson, Bernard Porter, Nick Hiley and Stephen Dorril; that’s followed by World War Two spy movie The Triple Cross.

That’s pretty much where the Radio Times peters out, so I can’t tell if that’s the end of the season or not.

All in all some good stuff, but a little weaker than I was hoping. I’d have loved to have seen some decent 80s spy shows, like The Sandbaggers or The Cold Warrior, added to the mix. Even the slightly naff 60s spy show The Rat Catchers may have been an amusing addition. And then there was The Avengers, Danger Man, The Prisoner…

I’m hoping they’re all on Tuesday the 5th.

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.

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