This will be popping up on the Action TV web site at some point soon, but you lucky people get to see it first.
On paper, The Sandbaggers could have been one of many lesser shows. Detailing life for the “Special Operations section” of MI6/SIS, it could have been a James Bond-esque tale of daring-do. It could have been a slightly more sedate, John Le Carré-style affair, all intrigue, politics and back-biting. Instead, it proved to be a combination of both worlds, marrying the excitement of a Fleming book with the authenticity of Le Carré.
Throughout the show’s three series, the agents of the piece – the eponymous Sandbaggers – and their boss, former Sandbagger Neil Burnside (Roy Marsden) were faced with as many murky plots from the depths of Whitehall and from the UK’s supposed allies as they were by Soviet espionage. They failed or died in their missions on any number of occasions because of office politics back home, all while being paid a civil service salary.
The success of the show was as much due to the authenticity of the scripts as it was the mesmerising central performance of Marsden. Much of that was a result of the (possible) inside knowledge of the show’s creator, former naval officer Ian Mackintosh, who wrote all the scripts for the show’s first two series. At the very least, it was because of his talent as a scriptwriter.
Tragically, Mackintosh died in an aircraft crash before the start of the third series of the show. He’d managed to write a number of scripts, including the final episode’s, but without his continued input, the show failed to hit the creative heights of the previous two series.
