Nice effects though.

Good concept, poorly executed.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

In the opening scenes of this seven part adaption of John Le Carré's story opens with the news that Magnus Pym, one of Britain's most respected spies has gone missing. The series then shows us Magnus's life up to this point. It is clear that his father Rick, a conman, has been a major influence on him from his early days as he involves Magnus in his schemes and tells him that one should be prepared to do anything for those you care for. Rick sends his son to a private school then to university in Switzerland. It is here that he meets Czech refugee Axel; the two become the best of friends but soon Axel is arrested by the authorities and deported. Time passes and Magnus joins the security services, the then meets Axel, who is now working for Czech intelligence, again and so begins a life time of deception. Magnus quickly becomes one of the agency's most important men and he is ultimately posted to the United States; here the Americans start to suspect him but his bosses are convinced that Magnus is one of the best; certainly not a traitor.Anybody who watched the recent Le Carré adaptation 'The Night Manager' and expects more of the same may be disappointed; this isn't about action or even about the scheming of spies, instead it is a character study of one man and how events turned him into a traitor. The usual clichéd motives of blackmail, ideology and money are eschewed in favour of a friendship forged in one's youth and the influence of his father. The story unfolds in a way that keeps Magnus a sympathetic character despite his treason. Peter Egan does a great job as Magnus Pym and is ably supported by Rüdiger Weigang as Axel; the scenes between the two are a delight. The rest of the cast are impressive too. The story unfolds at a steady pace but is never boring and the tension raises as the series approaches its inevitably tragic conclusion. Overall I recommend this to anybody who enjoys a good drama but doesn't demand lots of action.

There is a brilliant lesson of sorts here about narrative depth, but you must know the book. Lavishly conceived by Le Carre as his magnum opus, the book is not any other spy thriller you picked up on an airport, it's one of the most tantalizing I know. The center is this, a mysterious man, posing as someone else, is holed up in a small room in Dorset overlooking the ocean and recalls a whole journey through life. The childhood stream-of-consciousness where he attempts to be Faulkner without conquering the madness doesn't work; so much else does. It has a strong sense of presence in several places from Greek islands to Washington, the center of control. It has a sense of anxious premonition about the extents of control. It has a narrator writing a memoir while efforts are underway to apprehend him before he defects to the other side. It has several relationships of ambiguous love defined in his imagination. It has a disappearance in the middle of the night and a strange encounter in a Czech barn.This, it just won't do.The most glaring fault by far is that they simplified the structure, making it a linear telling in one go (practically). The childhood segment works even less because when seen, it loses the shroud of memory. Seeing Rick is never going to be as powerful as sensing him move through room's of the son's memory. It still covers most of the narrative ground but we lose the premonition, we lose the mystifying sense of machinery set in motion long ago and discovered only when the ground beneath our feet shifts, we lose the depth of the betrayal of love. We lose it all and get a nicely groomed play. Its idea of profound emotion is actors grimacing in close up; I was stunned to see that it's from the late 80s, it looks 20 years older.I don't know if this is watchable fiction, maybe it is, but it's a complete catastrophe where it should go beyond it and give us lives, contact, sense, everything Le Carre strove to have it slide through portals of remembrance is reduced to the Cliff notes version.But something weird happens. To see this and to have known the book is to have images of something I've known as deeper, more elusive, more rending and this, for me, was to recall even the book as deeper than Le Carre managed with words. A powerful scene in the film exemplifies just this, when his wife, alarmed by events, begins to read an unfinished manuscript he's left behind, ostensibly a novel he's writing (he says), but she suspects it's more, we know it's more, it's the disguised recollections of a lifetime (this is completely flattened in this linear telling).She cries as she reads about betrayal as hope, as salvation, as an adventure for the imaginative soul, but oh how much more maddeningly full is the life behind the words. His wife, his mentor in the service, will they ever truly know? To know this is to realize how much we won't truly know in turn. There's only so much you can say and so easy to misunderstand. What Le Carre doesn't put to words around this life deserves its Tarkovsky film.

If Smiley's People and Tinker Tailor Spy were about the "how" of espionage, A Perfect Spy is about the "who".Whereas the first two were essentially two long investigations, A Perfect Spy, which begins as a non-linear story line in the novel, is about the socio-psychological components of what goes into making a spy.While those who have read the book will find this adaptation surprising, it is also one of the finest. The story is linear, starting with a young Magnus, his con father, and his acolytes.The background of the series is about the issue of what I would call inverted loyalties. Time and again, we see Magnus' relationship with his father as one where the former is criminally tolerant and indulgent, as any son with a deranged father might. During Magnus' childhood, and through his mentoring by Jack Brotherhood, we see an individual with divided loyalties, but seemingly true to both.What this creates for the viewer is the impression that the good guys are actually bad, and vice versa, without resorting to any literary or artistic device. For example, we see immediately that Axel is initially harmless, but while he does something objectionable, nevertheless remains very attaching. For Magnus, it is the same. The buildup of his character during childhood only strengthens our sympathy for him. The reality is only revealed when Egan's character towards the end, when the Americans are catching on) starts to decompose.To my taste, the series spends too much time on the childhood of the hero character. There are also devices taken from the book that are clearly unnecessary for the series (the green filing cabinet for example), and the relationship with Brotherhood could have been expanded, for the sake of balance with that of Axel Hampel.Not to be sexist, but the women in the series are simply annoying. Also, their role in Magnus', Jack's professional lives and the spy craft is merely as sex-pots, which doesn't always conform to the zeitgeist. Although this was perhaps truer in the 1970s, when the novel's action was taking place. Also, some people don't seem to age, yet, they've been apparently working since the end of WW2; i.e. Jack Brotherhood, from 1947 to 1987 without a grey hair...Overall, however, we see compelling acting. Egan, MacAnally, Weigang at the summit of their art.The last ten minutes of the series is the finest acting ever filmed or seen.

This is my second time through for A Perfect Spy. I watched it 2 or 3 years ago and liked it. I like it still. It's natural that it gets compared to the beeb's other big Le Carre' series, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Tinker Tailor focuses on the "game" spies play; Perfect Spy gives us the other axis - what kind of person a spy is. There are a number of themes that these movies share, along with others in the genre.Ambiguity - moral, sexual, interpersonal - which creates a multidimensional space of true vs. false, inside vs. outside, love vs. responsibility. In a way, these characters are happiest when they are being treated the most shabbily by those they love and respect - "backstabbed" in its various nuances.The theme of fathers and father-figures is also important. One of the most intriguing characters in A Perfect Spy is Rick, the main character Magnus' perhaps ersatz father. Throughout the story he betrays and is betrayed. A rogue who always manages to climb back up the ladder when he's been toppled, who seems impervious to what others think of him, asks Magnus each time they meet, "Do you love your old man?" and never, "Do you love me?" Maybe it says this somewhere else, but A Perfect Spy is a love story.Another theme is that of malignancy. The nature of the business is to turn others - turn them against their government, against their friends and associates, turn them against their values and beliefs. In each of the Le Carre' movies I have seen, The Spy who Came in From the Cold, Looking Glass War, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Smiley's People, and A Perfect Spy, turning and being turned is the foundation of the tragedy. Finally, not so much a theme as an artistic touch - in each of these films there is usually only a single gun shot, or perhaps two shots bookending the story. Violence, torture, cruelty are always just beneath the surface. We see their results not as streams of blood or dank prison cells but in the the objects Le Carre''s characters cling to as they are ineluctably sucked down into the morass.If you haven't seen the films above, and you enjoy A Perfect Spy, you are in for a treat. I'd also recommend The Sandbagger series (Yorkshire TV), the 2nd and 3rd seasons of which begin to reach the level of this kind of complexity. The IPCRESS File and Burial in Berlin are nice, though light weight. For political intrigue try A Very British Coup, House of Cards and Yes, Minister/Yes, Prime Minister. If only a brit would set his hand to making The Three Kingdoms - there would be a film with intrigue and complexity.