A Spy Among Friends on MGM+, Episode 1: Boom-ooh-yatatatah

A Spy Among Friends has finally arrived on MGMplus today! The first episode is FREE without subscription and you can now watch it here. They are dropping Episode 1 and 2 today followed by oneย  episode per week for the next 4 weeks. That is what I will do with my episode recaps as well.

First things first: Since I was not patient enough for the mini-series to arrive in the US, I watched it on ITVX via VPN back in December. And As someone who read Ben MacIntyre’s book twice, I find Alexander Cary’s adaptation very clever. Nick Murphy’s background in documentary is evident and Joanna Eatwell proves once again she is the master of costume design. Damian Lewis, Guy Pearce, Anna Maxwell Martin and Stephen Kunken give off-the-chart brilliant performances.

A Spy Among Friends is slow-cooking, captivating and elegant. It isย  cinematic to a degree that I envy the viewers who could see the first two episodes on big screen at the BFI London Film Festival. There are flashbacks and you need to pay attention – don’t text and watch ๐Ÿ™‚ So, yes, ladies and gentlemen, A Spy Among Friends is exactly my cup of tea!

So shall we?

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What to Expect When We Are Expecting ‘A Spy Among Friends’

Kim Philby is arguably the most famous – or should I say infamous? – secret agent of all times. He may not be as well known as James Bond, but in contrast to 007, Philby was a real-life spy and the most successful member of the Cambridge Five, a group of spies recruited by the Russians to pass information from the UK to the Soviet Union during the Second World War through 1950s. A charming and brilliant Cambridge graduate, he quickly rose to the top of the counterintelligence unit at the MI6. He became the head of the anti-Soviet unit, served as the MI6 chief in Istanbul and ultimately became MI6’s Washington-based liaison with the CIA. Having his confidantes at MI6 and becoming close friends with James Angleton, a rising star at the CIA . While his betrayal got some of his colleagues into big trouble and took several Soviet defectors to their deaths, nobody suspected Philby for years. And when some at the MI5 flagged him, his colleagues at the MI6 and the CIA came to the rescue. When they finally had the evidence to confront him, Philby had already provided secret information to the Soviets for 30 years! Continue reading “What to Expect When We Are Expecting ‘A Spy Among Friends’”

A Spy Among Friends, Episode 6: No Man’s Land

The East German authorities built the Berlin Wall to stop people from escaping to West Germany.ย  Most of the 155 km wall was made up of 3.6m high concrete panels while the rest was barbed wire. A heavily guarded no man’s land (the title of the episode!) known as the “death strip” ran along the Eastern side of the Wall. More than 7,000 East German soldiers manned the watchtowers and the bunkers. It was the best-lit area in Berlin thanks to the lamp posts every 30 meters. In addition, there were alarms, ditches, barbed wire, guard dogs and weapons that automatically fired shots at the escapers.

A Spy Among Friends finale opens at one of the seven crossing points between East Berlin and West Berlin. As I try to understand who is in the car approaching the checkpoint to get into East Berlin…

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A Spy Among Friends, Episode 5: Snow

A Spy Among Friends is the kind of show where one should pay attention to every detail. For me, this extends to episodeย  titles. Snow.ย  It is a polysemous word. The first thing that comes to mind when snow is concerned is, of course, the small white pieces of ice that sometimes fall from the sky when it is cold. However,ย  as a verb, snow also means to deceive or trick someone with persuasive talk. And it is exactly what spies do, isn’t it?ย  So it snows in Moscow in this episode while the spies keep snowing each other ๐Ÿ™‚

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A Spy Among Friends, Episode 4: Vodka

The Russian National drink names this episode and is a recurring theme in the story.

Na Zdorovie!

Important morning in Moscow for Philby. He has an appointment at Lubyanka, the KGB headquarters, for his debrief. The CIA agents are watching him dress up from the CIA safe house across from his apartment. As he prepares to leave, Philby remembers the press conference he had 10 years ago to deny the accusation that he was responsible for helping Donald MacLean and Guy Burgess escape to the USSR. Continue reading “A Spy Among Friends, Episode 4: Vodka”