Two lots of TV Spies! And a dachshund.
First: Deutschland 83. I'm really enjoying this series about East German spies in West Germany in 1983. I was a bit cautious about a German-language drama that must be watched with subtitles, but it's really compelling watching. Martin Rauch is a young East German border guard who is persuaded/strongarmed into going undercover as Moritz Stamm, aide to Major General Edel. Edel who is something big in West German defence and involved in negotiating with the Americans about their nuclear policy, and he has a teenage son who has political doubts, and a daughter who has fled her comfortable well-off home overshadowed by war to live in a commune. It's quite a ruthless story: turns out the real Stamm has been murdered and he definitely isn't the last one.
But at the same time, all the characters are so vulnerable and human and complicated, caught up in a political situation that they can't control and often don't really seem to understand, and on both sides of the border, at horrible risk of becoming collateral damage to a US/Soviet tension that they could not possibly do anything about. I was always going to adore this story: it's very Le Carré . I adore all the retro things like the cars and phones and that odd orange wood furniture that was everywhere in the 80's. But Pp is really enjoying it too, and I hear it has been well reviewed. Apparently there are possibilties that there might be a followup Deutchland 86, and then possibly even '89, which would be rather marvellous, to see the fall of the Berlin Wall from both sides.
And then : The Night Manager This of course really is by Le Carré. As a bit of a fan, I'm faintly ashamed to admit that this is one of his books that I'd missed. I read his Cold War books pretty until some of them had started to fall apart, but I stopped buying everything he wrote back in the 90's, when it felt like he had lost his subject a bit with the end of the Cold War, and so this had passed me by. A pity, as this first episode was great! The setting had been updated from the early 90's to the Arab Spring, so it felt very immediate. Lots of opportunities for mixing in news coverage among the filming.
Possibly the cast was a little distractingly-famous. Tom Hiddleston was really very good as Jonathan Pine, the hotel Night Manager who encounters secrets of importance to HM Gov... but I'm not *quite* sure about Hugh Laurie as an arms trader. He's an excellent actor, but playing a plummy-voiced Englishman he's just a tiny bit too close to a Bir of Fry and Laurie, I kept expecting him to sit down at a piano and start belting out comic songs. But perhaps that's just me. Olivia Coleman as a gritty Northern spy assigned to some tiny intelligence unit with inadequate resources and knackered central heating though, was brilliant. I'm looking forward to seeing more of that end of things.
In other news, I was stopped while dog walking this morning by a chap who asked if I had seen a dachshund and a Westie wandering the lanes. "Sorry, no!" I said, and was about to go on, when a vague memory came to me.I had seen such an unusual pair of dogs advertised as found by the dogwarden on the 'Please look out for these missing dogs in Cornwall' Facebook group, as having been found perhaps a mile away. So I said that, and then I had to explain what a council dogwarden was, and how such a bizarre concept could be contacted. Sigh.
But I see from the daily update from the Council that those two dogs are no longer on the found list, so presumably he did manage to find his way there. Hurray!
I hope they gave him the talk about 'how dogs are legally required to wear collars and tags with full address details' although no doubt the sizeable reclaim fine will also have served as a pressing reminder.
But at the same time, all the characters are so vulnerable and human and complicated, caught up in a political situation that they can't control and often don't really seem to understand, and on both sides of the border, at horrible risk of becoming collateral damage to a US/Soviet tension that they could not possibly do anything about. I was always going to adore this story: it's very Le Carré . I adore all the retro things like the cars and phones and that odd orange wood furniture that was everywhere in the 80's. But Pp is really enjoying it too, and I hear it has been well reviewed. Apparently there are possibilties that there might be a followup Deutchland 86, and then possibly even '89, which would be rather marvellous, to see the fall of the Berlin Wall from both sides.
And then : The Night Manager This of course really is by Le Carré. As a bit of a fan, I'm faintly ashamed to admit that this is one of his books that I'd missed. I read his Cold War books pretty until some of them had started to fall apart, but I stopped buying everything he wrote back in the 90's, when it felt like he had lost his subject a bit with the end of the Cold War, and so this had passed me by. A pity, as this first episode was great! The setting had been updated from the early 90's to the Arab Spring, so it felt very immediate. Lots of opportunities for mixing in news coverage among the filming.
Possibly the cast was a little distractingly-famous. Tom Hiddleston was really very good as Jonathan Pine, the hotel Night Manager who encounters secrets of importance to HM Gov... but I'm not *quite* sure about Hugh Laurie as an arms trader. He's an excellent actor, but playing a plummy-voiced Englishman he's just a tiny bit too close to a Bir of Fry and Laurie, I kept expecting him to sit down at a piano and start belting out comic songs. But perhaps that's just me. Olivia Coleman as a gritty Northern spy assigned to some tiny intelligence unit with inadequate resources and knackered central heating though, was brilliant. I'm looking forward to seeing more of that end of things.
In other news, I was stopped while dog walking this morning by a chap who asked if I had seen a dachshund and a Westie wandering the lanes. "Sorry, no!" I said, and was about to go on, when a vague memory came to me.I had seen such an unusual pair of dogs advertised as found by the dogwarden on the 'Please look out for these missing dogs in Cornwall' Facebook group, as having been found perhaps a mile away. So I said that, and then I had to explain what a council dogwarden was, and how such a bizarre concept could be contacted. Sigh.
But I see from the daily update from the Council that those two dogs are no longer on the found list, so presumably he did manage to find his way there. Hurray!
I hope they gave him the talk about 'how dogs are legally required to wear collars and tags with full address details' although no doubt the sizeable reclaim fine will also have served as a pressing reminder.