Oct 20, 2010

Tradecraft: HBO Develops Cold War Spy Drama

Now this is what I've been waiting for!  With period dramas all the rage on cable, like Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire, I keep hoping we'll see a taut, serious, Le Carre-esque Cold War-era spy series pop up on one of the cable nets.  And now comes word from Deadline that HBO is developing just such a show!  The trade blog reports that Boardwalk Empire executive producers Stephen Levinson and Mark Wahlberg, New Yorker writer/best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell and film/TV writer Charles Randolph (The Interpreter) have concocted a spy show for the channel. "Set in Cold War Berlin, the untitled project, to be written by Randolph, centers on a missionary who becomes involved in the CIA." Well, that's not too much info, but the setting alone is enough to have me highly excited for this project.  I hope it goes to series! 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have seriously been wondering why no one has concocted something like this. Most people like spy shows (I think) and the Cold War era is richly fascinating enough to create a series around.

Much as I love Covert Affairs and Burn Notice, the old school 60s spies series are more appealing to me. I can't say it's nostalgia either, because I'm 17!

Tanner said...

I know! The era is so rich for spy stories! I don't want to relegate the genre to a period piece, because there are certainly plenty of spy stories to be told today, but the Sixties will always be the greatest era for spy stories and I think it's surprising it's taken this long for a modern show set then.

Like you, I wasn't around in the Sixties (although the Cold War was still wrapping up in my own Eighties/Nineties childhood), but the era attracts me like no other. I guess you could call it a false nostalgia?