Public Service Announcement: Don't Forget to Reset Your DVRs for New Season of Archer on FXX

Archer returns for a brand new season on April 5. By now everyone is probably aware that the former spy parody will undergo a pretty big format change this year, morphing via coma dreams (Magnum-style, in keeping with last year's Eighties detective stylings) into a 1940s film noir send-up... but you may not know that it's also changing networks, moving from FX to FXX. And if you did know that, you still may not have considered the immediate ramifications of that switch. If you have a series recording set on your DVR, with many models you will need to cancel that recording and set up a new one for the new channel. Otherwise, Archer: Dreamland will fail to automatically appear in your recordings and you'll probably forget about it and miss the whole season. Or maybe that's just me who still uses a DVR and misses seasons when shows switch networks. But just in case! And another thing that might help you not forget that the new season exists is watching this promising trailer:

Great Deals On Spy TV

When Paramount first released The Wild Wild West: The Complete Series back in 2008, many fans were upset because it included the two reunion movies Wild Wild West Revisited (1979) and More Wild Wild West (1980). The problem was that neither of those had been included with any of the individual season releases, and the disc they were on was never released on its own, so their inclusion on the pricey complete series was seen as a slap in the face to fans who had diligently bought each season as it was released. But now as part of their Cyber Monday Deals Week (yes, they made up a day and then they made that made-up day a week), Amazon is offering the all-inclusive box set for a truly affordable price. What originally retailed for $100 is now just $29.99 for this week only! For that money, it's worth finally making the upgrade for fans who bought all the seasons but always wanted the reunion movies as well. I'm sure you can make back thirty bucks by selling off your single-season sets and break even. And if you never bought any of the individual sets, this bargain is a no-brainer. The Wild Wild West is one of the best spy series of the Sixties, and The Wild Wild West: The Complete Series is an essential part of any spy library.

Speaking of essential parts of spy libraries, there's another must-have complete series set on sale today (and this one is today only at this price): Foyle's War: The Home Front Files Sets. The Homefront Files collects seasons 1-6 (that's all but this year's post-war seventh series) of Anthony (Alex Rider) Horowitz's espionage-heavy and completely fantastic WWII mystery series starring Pierce Brosnan's Bill Tanner, Michael Kitchen, and today the set which regularly retails for $150 is just $39.99! Buy it for yourself or give someone an awesome Christmas gift... or send a strong hint to someone who's buying you a Christmas gift. Foyle's War is great stuff.

The 2012 Spy Fan's Guide to Last Minute Holiday Shopping, Part 2: TV

Yesterday I talked about all the great spy movies to consider as possible Christmas gifts this year, or ways to spend your Christmas gift cards. Today I present some ideas of TV shows on DVD and Blu-ray...

Television

Perhaps the rarest spyish release of the year comes from down under. I honestly never thought I'd see this one get an official release... but now we have one! Australia's Madman label released a Region 4 PAL DVD of the rarest of all of The Saint's TV incarnations, the 1987 telefilm (and failed series pilot) The Saint in Manhattan, starring Australian Andrew Clarke as the infamous Simon Templar. This is the version that, true to its time, recast Templar in the Magnum mold, complete with mustache and Italian supercar (a Lamborghini Countach). Obviously it didn't go to series, but I personally think it's better than its reputation would indicate... and I like Clarke. Until this year I'd only ever seen it in a grainy, third generation VHS recording, so I particularly welcomed this quality DVD. You can watch a short clip from The Saint in Manhattan on the Madman website... but it's not totally indicative of the production as a whole. The cost is $14.95AU, which might seem steep for a single 50 minute TV episode, but for Saint completists it's definitely worth it. So if you've got one of those on your shopping list, and they own an all-region player, you can make them awfully happy with this obscure treasure. Of course, you don't have to go all the way to Australia to find great spy TV releases this Christmas...

For spy fans with well-heeled benefactors, this year's must-own big ticket DVD set is Mission: Impossible - The Complete Series. This 56-disc collection includes every single episode of every single season of the greatest American spy series of the Sixties and Seventies, as well as both complete seasons of its late Eighties revival! That's a lot of Peter Graves. Normally I'm somewhat averse to gimmicky DVD packaging, but this giant stick of dynamite with its trademark fuse is just too cool! And, unlike so many of these complete series gift sets, it's also not needlessly chunky: there isn't any wasted space in this packaging, making it utilitarian as well as cool. It would ultimately occupy less shelf space than all the individual season sets. Another advantage of this gift set over the seasons on their own is that it comes with an exclusive bonus disc. I still haven't seen a complete rundown on the contents of this disc, though, and the only things that Paramount initially teased us with weren't all that impressive. Still, this set is all-out cool. Unfortunately, it's also $370, and even Amazon's significant discount only reduces it to $267.84.

If the spy fan on your list already has all the individual Mission: Impossible seasons and, like me, craves more Peter Graves, then for a lot less you can get them the complete series of another Graves show: the Antipodean Western Whiplash (review here), which made its Region 1 debut this fall from Timeless Media. It's not spy, but it is Graves, and it is cheap.

For a Western that is about spying (and assuming the spy fan on your list already has the most essential spy Western, The Wild Wild West), Timeless has another recent release of interest: Yancy Derringer - The Complete Series, starring future Tarzan Jock Mahoney as a secret agent operating in 19th Century New Orleans.

Returning to contemporary spy shows of the Sixties, this year you can finally get someone the Robert Wagner show It Takes a Thief: The Complete Series. The set first came out last year this time from Entertainment One, but then I recommended against buying it because the poor quality of the presentation of later seasons and the shoddy, excessively bulky packaging (this is the kind I do hate) weren't worth the offensively high asking price of $150. But this year the price is reduced to an affordable $44.49, which is actually very reasonable for three seasons on 18 discs! And regardless of the quality of some of the transfers, the show itself is top-notch Sixties spy entertainment. You can also get The Complete First Season on its own for thirty bucks (and the quality of the first season transfers is unassailable), but if you're gonna do that, why not shell out the extra $14 for the two remaining seasons?

Replacing a long out of print (and incomplete) release of dubious legality, Film Chest's Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp Complete Collector's Edition surpasses the old version in all respects. The 3-disc Collector's Edition contains all of the Saturday morning ABC show's 17 episodes (each of which actually featured two separate 15-minute adventures) transferred from the original ABC vault masters (rather than dubbed from off-air VHS recordings), plus bonus content like the  music and videos of the all monkey band Evolution Revolution, whose segments were introduced on the original series by ape talk show host "Ed Simian." If you're unfamiliar with Lancelot Link, he was (as you'd probably deduce from that cover art) a chimpanzee secret agent. He worked for the secret organization APE (Agency to Prevent Evil) and tangled with the nefarious agents of CHUMP (Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan). All characters were played by trained primates and voiced by human comedians. Such a concoction could only have arisen from the spy-mad Sixties (indeed, Lancelot Link might be the ultimate product of the secret agent mania spawned by James Bond which trickled down to all facets of the media), but Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp didn't actually hit airwaves until 1970. (It ran until '72.) Your enjoyment of the series will no doubt be predicated upon your personal tolerance for languidly paced human-voiced monkey antics with jokes recycled from Get Smart, and you're probably better qualified to judge that for yourself than I can. But for a certain breed of spy fan, this release will make a most welcome Christmas gift!

For decidedly more serious Sixties spy fare, you can't do much better than Man in a Suitcase. Richard Bradford stars in this ITC series as an American secret agent tossed out by his own agency whose freelance adventures take him all over Europe. It's downbeat enough to appeal to spy fans with a more serious palette than lighter ITC fare like The Saint or Department S, but still ITC enough to be a lot of fun. Man in a Suitcase: Set 2 (review here) made its Region 1 debut early this year from Acorn Media, though while that's possibly a better collection of episodes overall, you're better off starting with Man in a Suitcase: Set 1 (review here). Either way, you're getting great spy television! And a great gift.

Acorn Media also released another gritty UK cop/spy show this year, Special Branch: Set 1, marking the Thames Television series' Region 1 DVD debut. It may be called Set 1, but rather confusingly, it's not the show's first season. Acorn are following the same strategy they did with Callan: they're beginning with the first color season from the Seventies, which is actually the show's third season. However, that decision works a little better for Special Branch than it did for Callan because whereas that show plunged viewers confusingly into the middle of an ongoing, serial plotline, Special Branch was completely rebooted when it switched to color. Even the stars are different. Derren Nesbitt led the cast of the black and white series; the color episodes star George Sewell and Callan's Patrick Mower. Despite the very conspicuous "Classic British SPY Drama" tag on the packaging (which I certainly think looks cool), I'd say that Special Branch leans more toward a cop show overall. (The first episode won't give you any hint of espionage.) But there are plenty of spy-oriented episodes down the line, and while nothing could be the equal of Callan, Callan fans will be attracted to the similar gritty tone, as well as the presence of Mower. Speaking of Callan (review here), while it may not be new this year, it would still make a great Christmas gift as well, and is really a must-have for any spy fan who's still yet to see it. (Set 1 and Set 2, comprising the entirety of its color series, are both available in Region 1.) Another classic, can't-go-wrong Seventies UK spy show is The Sandbaggers. Any of those DVD sets under the tree will make a serious spy fan very happy indeed!

And while we're on the subject of classic British spy series of that era, you certainly can't overlook Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy! I listed the new version among my movie suggestions yesterday, but the 1979 miniseries is equally essential. (Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is the rare novel to enjoy two excellent adaptations.) And Acorn released the best looking home video edition ever of the miniseries earlier this year when they put it out on Blu-ray. Not only does the Blu-ray look as good as UK television of that vintage will ever look, but it also boasts some great special features. First and foremost, it includes as deleted scenes all the bits from the UK broadcast originally excised when the U.S. broadcast was reconfigured from seven episodes to six, making this the first time that American viewers have ever had the opportunity to see those wonderful scenes (totaling 11 minutes)! On top of that, the Blu-ray also includes half-hour interviews with le Carré and director John Irvin.

Hm, this was supposed to be the Seventies section of this loosely thematically grouped guide, but it's turning out to be the Acorn section. Well, that's okay. I like any company that puts out so many Sixties and Seventies spy series! Here's a less well-known one that might make it an even better gift, as plenty of spy fans are unlikely to have seen it yet. Former man from U.N.C.L.E. Robert Vaughn won an Emmy for the 1977 miniseries Washington: Behind Closed Doors, based on the Roman à clef The Company by former Nixon aide and Watergate figure John Ehrlichman. The novel is Erlichman's fictionalized account of the events leading up to the Watergate scandal, and follows veteran CIA agent turned Director of Central Intelligence Bill Martin (loosely based on real-life DCI Richard Helms) as he attempts to keep secret a report exposing the Agency's past misdeeds. To do that, he crosses paths with figures based on Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, Henry Kissinger, Hubert Humphrey and Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman. Cliff Robertson stars as Martin, Jason Robards plays the Nixon-like President Richard Monckton, and Vaughn plays the Haldeman figure. Andy Griffith co-stars along with spy vets Stefanie Powers (The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.) and Barry Nelson (the original James Bond in the '54 Casino Royale). The 3-disc, 6-episode set comes with an 8-page bonus booklet with articles on the historical background of the program, the Vietnam War, peace movements in America, Nixon’s visit to China, and the Watergate scandal; plus brief biographies of the political figures of the period.

Moving on to the Eighties and lighter fare, Scarecrow and Mrs. King: The Complete Third Season would make a great gift for fans of the lighter side of the genre. For some reason this show always makes me think of Christmas, even if there was (I think) only one actual holiday-themed episode. Scarecrow and Mrs. King, which was really the only bona fide hit spy series of the 1980s on American television, pairs professional secret agent Lee Stetson (Bruce Boxleitner), codename "Scarecrow," with perky Washington housewife Amanda King (Kate Jackson). It's light and played for laughs and romance over thrills, but at it's best it sometimes evokes the spirit of The Avengers, were that classic transplanted to Reagan-era American suburbia. (Read my review of Scarecrow and Mrs. King: The Complete First Season here.)

Of course, vintage spy shows, great as they are, like Tosca, aren't for everyone. But we're living in a renaissance of spy TV, so there are also plenty of contemporary spy shows on DVD with which to stuff stockings!

Leading that renaissance is the best new spy series of the last year, Homeland, the first season of which is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Fox Home Entertainment. Claire Danes stars as an obsessive CIA agent on anti-psychotics (a fact she's forced to hide from her superiors in order to retain her security clearance) who's convinced that a newly freed American POW (Damien Lewis) is not actually the war hero he's celebrated as but a turned Al Qaeda sleeper agent. Mandy Patinkin excels as her Agency mentor, who reluctantly turns a blind eye to her illegal surveillance operation. It's a thoroughly addictive, multi-layered series not just about spies but spying itself, and the effect such a career and the responsibilities that go with it have on its practitioners. All of the characters are extremely well drawn, and all of the actors are compelling to watch. Homeland is fully deserving of all the awards it's won, and I heartily hope spy fans who weren't able to see it on pay cable station Showtime will discover Homeland: The Complete First Season on DVD or Blu-ray... making it a perfect Christmas gift. Trust me, after watching the exemplary pilot episode, they'll be hooked.

Cinemax's first U.S. season of Strike Back is on the polar opposite end of the spectrum of cable spy series from Homeland. As cerebral as that show is, Strike Back is totally mindless, turn-your-brain-off entertainment of the very best sort. If the spy fan on your list is more into that side of the genre, then the Strike Back: Cinemax Season One DVD or Blu-ray will make an ideal gift. Cinemax's Strike Back (reviewed here) is packed with fun, exciting, over-the-top spy action of a sort rarely seen on American television, boasting impressive locations ranging from New Delhi to Capetown to Darfur.

USA's Covert Affairs straddles the line quite comfortably between Homeland's braininess and Strike Back's action-packedness. Covert Affairs - Season Two, a 4-disc, 16-episode collection, is the latest DVD set. Covert Affairs, which stars Piper Perabo, Christopher Gorham, Kari Matchett and the great Peter Gallagher (though never quite enough of him) got even better in its second season, and one impressive Berlin-set episode made my Best of 2011 list. There are even more actual foreign locations in Season 2, from Istanbul to Paris to Stockholm, and their presence really elevates this series above other spy shows that dress up Burbank as whatever locale that week's script calls for. Covert Affairs: Season Two is packed with bonus material, including deleted and alternate scenes, a gag reel, Piper Perabo's Comic-Con Intro (from last year's panel) and a featurette called "Covert Affairs on Location."

Back to the slightly more obscure, Missing: The Complete First Season is another one that fans might have missed on TV during its brief run on ABC. Yes,  Missing was their "Taken with a lady" spy series starring Ashley Judd as a former CIA agent fighting her way across Europe to rescue her missing teenage son, all while evading the intelligence agencies of America, Italy and France along the way. But its quality surpassed that recycled premise. The best part is that, unlike most American TV shows, Missing was actually filmed in Europe! And the locations are among the show's highlights, along with the impressive action scenes. (Read my full review of the pilot here.) Sean Bean (GoldenEye), Cliff Curtis (Colombiana) and Adriano Giannini co-star. Extras on the DVD set include deleted scenes, bloopers, and the featurettes "Production Journal: Istanbul," and "Genesis Piece."

Of course, while obscurity makes for great gifts, there's something to be said for success as well. Burn Notice has been a huge hit on USA for six seasons now, making its latest DVD set, Burn Notice: Season Five, a pretty surefire gift as well. The fifth season of USA's flagship spy series was certainly an interesting one. The creators finally shook up the formula, which had honestly become a little stagnant, by having Jeffrey Donovan's formerly burnt spy Michael Westen finally rejoin the CIA... at least as a consultant. This new role opens up the scope of Michael's missions, and finds him on assignment overseas as an actual spy rather than just helping people in need in Miami. He also strikes up a somewhat uneasy partnership with his Agency handler, Agent Dani Pearce (Lauren Stamile), and finally comes face to face with the shadowy nemesis who burned him all those years ago. Overall, I thought it made for a marked improvement over the previous season for a show that's never less than thoroughly entertaining to begin with.

Another hit series likely to make a great gift is Person of Interest: The Complete First Season, available on DVD and Blu-ray/DVD combo sets. The CBS show, produced by J.J. Abrams and Jonah Nolan, is basically The Equalizer meets Batman... and that's pretty cool. I find star Jim Caviezel (the 2009 Prisoner remake) and his Batman voice kind of hard to take, but the show's got enough going for it that I can get past that. Besides, co-star Michael Emerson (Lost) is awesome. Caviezel plays a former CIA operative looking to atone for his shadowy past by helping the helpless (those with the odds against them) with the aid of Emerson's tech billionaire, who controls a massive surveillance network that can predict what people will be involved in violent crimes. Extras on both sets include an unaired extended pilot episodes with audio commentary as well as a commentary track on the broadcast pilot, a gag reel and the featurette "Living in an Age of Surveillance."

Okay, back to the more obscure! I never expected to see a Region 1 release of the 1989-90 ITV series Frederick Forsyth Presents, but thanks to Timeless Media Group, we got one this year, and it's priced just right for a stocking stuffer. That awkwardly Photoshopped cover isn't representative of the six classy TV movies contained on 3 discs within. These movies are mostly based on novellas contained in Forsyth's book The Deceiver. Alan Howard (best known as the voice of the Ring in the Lord of the Rings movies) plays unorthodox spymaster Sam McCready, Forsyth's answer to George Smiley. McCready generally takes a backseat, however, to the people he's manipulating in each story. This formula enabled the producers to bring in big guest stars for each film, including Elizabeth Hurley, Lauren Bacall, Brian Dennehy, Beau Bridges, Chris Cooper, Phillip Michael Thomas, David Threlfall and Peter Egan. The ones I've seen are solid productions, and I'm not sure why this series isn't better known. It deserves a place beside other solid Forsyth adaptations like The Day of the Jackal (indeed, one of these stories concerns Carlos, the international terrorist the media dubbed "the Jackal" after Forsyth's book!), and especially the Pierce Brosnan and Michael Caine starrer The Fourth Protocol. (Fans of that film should definitely give this release a try.) This budget release, priced at just $14.98 (and even less on Amazon) will no doubt prove to be one of those nice little gems for spy fans eager for more serious espionage dramas in the serious vein of le Carré... making it an ideal gift for both giver and receiver.

Of course, "serious" isn't everybody's taste! On the opposite end of the spectrum is a show that's not only the silliest spy series on television, but one of the very best: Archer! Fox always releases Archer seasons right after Christmas, so even though Archer: The Complete Season Two came out nearly a year ago on DVD and Blu-ray, this is the first Christmas it's been available to gift. The wildly irreverent, always inappropriate Archer remains one of my favorite spy shows on TV, and as I said in my post about the Best Spy Television of 2011, I find it very impressive that the writers managed to maintain the high level of quality in its second season. That's particularly tough for a parody series. The secret, of course, is that Archer is much more than a mere spy parody. It's a dysfunctional family comedy that happens to be set in a spy agency. As I said before, the extremely raunchy humor is definitely not for all tastes, but if it is to someone's liking, they'll no doubt appreciate the excellent animation and cool spy style on top of the gags. The same day Season Two came out, Fox also made Archer: The Complete Season One widely available on Blu-ray for the first time, so that could make a good gift as well! The high-def version was previously a Best Buy exclusive, and Archer's top-notch design and crisp animation make it one show that truly benefits from high-def presentation.

Oh look, we're back to Acorn again! Wish Me Luck: Complete Collection brings together all three seasons of this 1988-90 WWII espionage favorite. At the height of the Second World War, France is occupied and all of England is in peril. Col. James “Cad” Cadogan (For Your Eyes Only's Julian Glover) will use any means necessary to get the intelligence he needs—even sending civilians to work undercover behind enemy lines. Based on the real-life stories of women recruited by Britain’s Special Operations Executive, this suspenseful drama series follows wife and mother Liz Grainger (Kate Buffery) and half-Jewish factory girl Matty Firman (Suzanna Hamilton) from training in England through the terror of their daily lives in Nazi-occupied France. Wish Me Luck originally aired on ITV for three series and was broadcast on U.S. public television in the 1990s. Jeremy Northam and Jane Asher co-star. The three seasons were all issued individually, but this complete collection is the way to go, gift-wise! And it's available at a terrific bargain price on Amazon right now.

On the subject of WWII espionage, the documentary series Secret War, on DVD from Athena, covers all aspects of wartime skullduggery in all its fascinating glory. It's really interesting stuff, dealing with all the most famous spies of the era, from Christine Granville to Agent Garbo to Dusko Popov. This one is a no-brainer for history buffs on your list, but it's also great viewing for spy fans in general, as the episodes play out like spy thrillers themselves. After all, espionage is one genre where the fact is often as incredible as the fiction.

Of course, spy fans aren't all limited to strict interpretations of the genre. Often detective shows will deal with espionage aspects as well, and a lot of spy fans tend to be detective fans as well. The BBC's Sherlock is about the best thing going in terms of detective shows today, and this modern-day incarnation of Holmes and Watson is particularly interested in the spy side of things, coming from the minds of Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat and Lucifer Box author Mark Gatiss. The first and best episode of Sherlock: Season 2 (available on DVD and Blu-ray), in fact, has a very strong espionage angle. But that's not even the reason to get it. The reason that this is a can't-miss gift for... anyone on your list is because of the spot-on performances by Benedict Cumberbatch (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) and Martin Freeman (The Hobbit) in the lead roles. These guys are great, and everyone should see this show!

Finally, there's another great detective who's been neatly collected just in time for Christmas. Poirot: The Early Cases Collection from Acorn gathers all of the early, hour-long Poirot mysteries in Blu-ray and DVD sets. And David Suchet's interpretation of Agatha Christie's most famous detective is definitive. Like Sherlock Holmes, he sometimes becomes embroiled in espionage, but it's the mysteries and the great performances that make this set an ideal gift for just about everyone as well. These episodes have been collected before, but in multiple, very expensive sets, not easily distinguished as what they are. This marks the first time they've been handily assembled all in one convenient place, and at a bargain cost for everything you get.

DVD Review: A Murder of Quality (1991)

DVD Review: A Murder of Quality (1991)

Note: This article contains minor spoilers about the book A Murder of Quality (but not the movie).

John le Carré’s second Smiley novel, 1962’s A Murder of Quality (review here), wasn’t adapted for the screen until nearly thirty years after its publication. It must have come as a surprise to readers and viewers when the feature-length television adaptation popped up so long after the fact. It’s possible that the BBC had been brainstorming how best to bring Smiley back to the screen ever since Smiley’s People scored so well with audiences and critics alike in 1982. Was an adaptation of 1989’s The Secret Pilgrim considered as a vehicle for Alec Guinness to return to the role? It would be a problematic novel to adapt, but I can’t imagine the prospect wasn't at least bandied about. Perhaps it was and Guinness turned it down. Whatever the case, that wasn’t made and TV producers were probably wondering how they could possibly top the big budget international production of Smiley’s People… and realized that they couldn’t. But if they went back to that second novel, a rich little period mystery set at a prep school, then they wouldn’t have to compete with past Smiley TV adaptations. It was small enough—and different enough—that direct comparisons would be unlikely. Of course that’s all pure speculation. Perhaps the impetus came from le Carré himself. As it happened, A Murder of Quality didn't come from the BBC, but from Thames Television, and it's a far different animal from the sprawling miniseries Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People.

Since A Murder of Quality isn’t a spy story and isn’t set at the Circus, the only series character involved is George Smiley himself. Denholm Elliott (Codename: Kyril, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) is quite good in the role (and certainly looks the part), playing a more seemingly befuddled Smiley than Guinness. It’s almost as if every actor who’s ever tackled the role has chosen to focus on a different aspect of the literary Smiley’s personality. If you could assemble them all together into some avant garde production along the lines of Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan biopic, I'm Not There (which featured multiple actors portraying separate aspects of the musician’s persona), you would have a complete representation of the character from the books. If James Mason is the Smiley the Lovelorn Cuckold and Alec Guinness is Smiley the Introvert and Gary Oldman is Smiley the Ruthless, then Elliott is Smiley the Fool. Of course, the fool is just a disguise for Smiley—a Lord Peter Wimseyish defense mechanism—and Elliott conveys that well. But it’s certainly a legitimate aspect of the literary Smiley. Elliott’s Smiley is Smiley as he’s perceived by people who don’t know better.

Le Carré himself penned the screenplay for A Murder of Quality… and, surprisingly, he wasn’t the most faithful of adaptors. It’s a weird experience watching this TV version right after reading the book, because the differences stand out more than the similarities. A lot of the same material is still there, but it’s been shuffled around, and good lines have been redistributed to different characters. It’s not that it’s been shortened (which wouldn’t be necessary for such a slim volume), but rewritten. This is the rare opportunity to witness an author with a chance to rewrite his second novel thirty years later, and observe exactly what he would have done differently. Personally, I preferred the original.

In his introduction to later editions of the novel, le Carré said, “Rereading the book now, I find a flawed thriller redeemed by ferocious and quite funny social comment.” For the screenplay he clearly accentuated the social comment, but it loses some of its bite in being moved to the fore. If he attempted to “fix” the thriller elements, he didn’t do a very good job. The mystery becomes more obvious in the film, and the cleverest part (involving a letter case behind) is streamlined so as to remove all the fun of the clue. Even the primary suspect in the murder mystery is changed. In the book, we’re led to always suspect the victim’s husband, Stanley Rhode (David Threlfall), because he’s mentioned in his late wife’s letter—the letter that gets Smiley involved in the case to begin with. And for all the reader knows, he could have done it. But in the movie, we see him, through a subjective camera, come home alone and discover his wife’s body and react, so we’re reasonably certain all along that he did not commit the crime! And, unfortunately, that doesn’t leave too many viable red herrings.

We also learn about Stella’s true nature much sooner in the movie than in the book—pretty much right away, in fact, which seriously dulls one of the novel’s biggest surprises and leaves us with a much more conventional Agatha Christie-type mystery. But because of the lack of red herrings and misdirection, it’s a lot more predictable than your typical Christie mystery. While the omission does streamline the plot, the book’s ingenious misdirection doesn’t seem to have been cut for the sake of time; what fit in a 150-page novel should fairly easily translate to a 90-minute drama. Instead, I suspect that le Carré purposely pared away a lot of the story’s “thriller” aspects in order to allow the social satire to better shine.

Indeed, he keeps much of his best (which is to say, nastiest—and funniest) dialogue verbatim, though while the lines were mostly Shane Hecht’s in the book, many have now been awarded to other characters, as Shane is a fairly minor role in the film. In fact, le Carré now gives the murderer some of Shane’s best lines, in order to accentuate his or her own class consciousness and drive home the already biting critique of the British class system. The move rather backfires, though, I’m afraid. In moving the social satire to the foreground, the author’s motives become too transparent. Such commentary works best when it’s surreptitiously inserted into other genres (like mystery) and takes the reader or viewer by surprise. When it’s the whole point of the piece, it loses a good deal of impact.

While I understand why Shane Hecht’s dialogue was redistributed, I don't understand why in the movie le Carré takes away some of Smiley’s actions and gives them to other characters, actually making his hero less proactive! That seems like an odd choice, and somewhat diminishes Smiley’s character.

All of my complaints, however, derive from direct comparisons to the book. Judged on its own merits, A Murder of Quality makes a handsome one-off in the PBS Mystery! mold (on which it originally aired in America), likely to satisfy most fans of British period detective shows. Director Gavin Miller (Foyle's War) creates a pleasing atmosphere and takes full advantage of his locations; whatever actual school stood in for Carne does a good job. There’s a first rate cast, too, including Joss Ackland as house Master Terrance Fielding (brother of one of Smiley’s wartime compatriots), Glenda Jackson as the former colleague who involves Smiley in the mystery, Ailsa Brimley, and a young Christian Bale (The Dark Knight) as one of the boys who unwittingly holds a vital piece of the puzzle. Diane Fletcher does a fine job as a slightly defanged Shane Hecht, but I can’t help imagining how wonderfully Maggie Smith might have channeled the character from the novel (with all her lines intact, hopefully). Ah well. What might have been. Matthew Scurfield is also good as Smiley’s police contact, Inspector Rigby.

Solid cast and high production values aside, though, the finished product is undeniably lightweight. As a television drama, A Murder of Quality is even less essential Smiley than the book. It’s still worth watching for serious Smiley fans, however, just to see Denholm Elliott’s take on the character. I quite like it, but wish we could have seen him in something a bit more substantial—like, maybe, another crack at Call for the Dead. As a spy story, that one might have drawn more inevitable comparisons to the Guinness miniseries, but I have to wonder if there might have been plans to film it with Elliott after A Murder of Quality had the actor's health held up? (He died a year later.) As things stand, his sole contribution to the Smiley Files is limited to this rather insubstantial television movie.

The Region 1 A&E DVD offers an adequate, if grainy (as expected for UK TV productions of that era) presentation, and is thankfully uncut. (There’s some surprising female nudity, which I can’t imagine made it into the original PBS broadcast.) Other than some text features on the author and the actors, there are no special features to speak of.

The Smiley Files
Part 1: George Smiley: An Introduction
Part 2: Movie Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Part 3: Book Review: Call for the Dead (1961)
Part 4: Movie Review: The Deadly Affair (1966)
Part 5: Book Review: A Murder of Quality (1962)

Book Review: A Murder of Quality (1962)

Book Review: A Murder of Quality (1962)

Part 5 of an ongoing series, "The Smiley Files," examining the career of George Smiley in literature and film. Read my introduction to Smiley here.

John le Carré’s second novel, A Murder of Quality, features George Smiley, but it doesn’t feature any spying. While Smiley finds himself either pushed out of the Circus (le Carré’s sobriquet for British Intelligence) or resigning from it in disgust in nearly every novel he appears in, A Murder of Quality is his only adventure that occurs entirely outside of the Circus, and doesn’t feature any of its staff—not even stalwart Peter Guillam. Instead, Smiley is called upon by an old friend and wartime intelligence colleague, Aisla Brimley, to investigate the murder of one Stella Rode, a junior teacher’s wife at an exalted English public school, the fictional Carne. While Smiley may be somewhat out of his element here, the author is decidedly not out of his. Because while a detective story isn’t necessarily a spy story, nearly all of le Carré’s spy stories are detective stories.

In Call for the Dead (review here), Smiley is an investigator attempting to solve a murder. The circumstances in which it happened and the people involved put that particular murder in the realm of Smiley’s department (though he resigns from it early on and acts as a private citizen for most of the novel) rather than the police, but his methodical investigation is very much in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes’ or Hercule Poirot’s investigations. And le Carré’s careful plotting very much follows the classical mystery structure, revealing one clue at a time, along with plenty of red herrings and misdirection. Later Smiley novels follow the same formula. Smiley’s People is another out-and-out murder investigation. In that one, Smiley’s called out of retirement (yet again) to probe the murder of an agent he used to run, a trail which will eventually lead him to his old nemesis, Karla. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a similarly structured detective story (again beginning with Smiley being summoned out of retirement), only the mystery is uncovering the identity of a mole rather than a killer. Still, the process is the same: a meticulous search for clues and a methodical study of the facts at hand. Even The Honourable Schoolboy has a mystery at its core—the mystery of Karla’s Hong Kong Gold Seam. (I'm glad le Carré didn't call it that, thought!) A Murder of Quality, therefore, is hardly treading unique narrative territory for the author, although the public school setting is unique for the character.

As Otto Penzler points out in his introduction to the Walker edition, Smiley is a natural detective, in the same league as Holmes and Poirot and all of their ilk. It somehow makes sense to see him tackle the same sort of case those titans would attack.

Smiley approaches detecting the same as he does spying. “It had been one of Smiley’s cardinal principles in research,” le Carré writes, “whether among the incunabula of an obscure poet or the laboriously gathered fragments of intelligence, not to proceed beyond the evidence. A fact, once logically arrived at, should not be extended beyond its natural significance. Accordingly he did not speculate with the remarkable discovery he had made, but turned his mind to the most obscure problem of all: motive for murder.” Smiley’s investigation is a textbook approach that would do his literary forebears proud, and once again le Carré proves a master of the form, doling out clues with enough regularity to make the problem solvable for the reader, but at the same time obscuring them with enough misdirection to make arriving at a conclusion difficult.

On the eve of her brutal murder, Mrs. Stella Rode wrote to Brimley’s agony column in a small nonconformist newspaper and expressed that she suspected her husband was trying to kill her. Thus her husband, Stanley Rode, seems the prime suspect when Smiley arrives on the scene, letter in hand for the local police. (As in Call for the Dead, he works hand-in-hand with an official detective.) However, despite the letter, Smiley quickly discovers a heap of evidence suggesting that Rode couldn't have done it. A whole assortment of suspects present themselves as the spy-cum-detective moves about in the halls of academia and the odd, fiercely class-conscious social circles of Carne.

Despite crafting a perfect mystery story, however (complete with a final false solution every bit as surprising and satisfying as the one in Tinker, Tailor), le Carré is less concerned about his genre than he is about his characters and themes. As with many of his spy novels, the thriller conventions here are merely a clotheshorse on which to hang a hilariously vicious condemnation of the British class system as cultivated in Etonian institutions—and with which to explore a handful of memorable, deeply flawed and deeply human characters.

The best dialogue comes from the characters for whom the author clearly feels the most contempt. Witness, for example, the venomous, socially-obsessed don’s wife Shane Hecht’s remembrances of the deceased: “Stella Rode was such a nice person, I always thought . . . and so unusual. She did such clever things with the same dress. . . .” Later, “I went to tea with Stella once. Milk in first and Indian. So different.” It’s clear that for someone like Shane Hecht, “different” could never be a compliment.

Or, on the subject of funerals: “I hate funerals, don’t you? Black is so insanitary. I always remember King George V’s funeral. Lord Sawley was at Court in those days, and gave Charles two tickets. So kind. I always think it spoilt us for ordinary funerals in a way. Although I’m never quite sure about funerals, are you? I have a suspicion that they are largely a lowerclass recreation; cherry brandy and seed cake in the parlour. I think the tendency of people like ourselves is for a quiet funeral these days; no flowers, just a short obituary and a memorial service later.”

For Shane Hecht, the author tells us, people exist “to be found wanting in the minute tests of social behavior, to be ridiculed, cut off, and destroyed.” A woman who collects the shame of others, she’s got Smiley’s number, too. She corners him at a dinner party and makes it clear what she thinks of this outsider in her hallowed circle:

“The only Smiley I ever heard of married Lady Ann Sercombe at the end of the war. She left him soon afterwards, of course. A very curious match. I understand he was quite unsuitable. She was Lord Sawley’s cousin, you know. The Sawleys have been connected with Carne for four hundred years. The present heir is a pupil of Charles; we often dine at the Castle.” For a moment the noise in the room stopped. For a moment, no more, he could discern nothing but the steady gaze of Shane Hecht upon him, and knew she was waiting for an answer. And then she released him as if to say: “I could crush you, you see. But I won’t, I’ll let you live,” and she turned and walked away.

Yes, this is very much the same Smiley we know and love from the other books. In addition to being hopelessly devoted to an absent wife, he’s “toad-like,” and “short and plump, with heavy spectacles and thinning hair,” and “the very prototype of an unsuccessful middle-aged bachelor in a sedentary occupation” whose “natural diffidence in most practical matters was reflected in his clothes, which were costly and unsuitable, for he was clay in the hands of his tailor, who robbed him.” Yet he’s also capable, when he finally corners the killer, of the same sudden ruthlessness we later witness on occasion in the Karla Trilogy. That doesn’t mean, however, that he has a taste for such things. “He had come to the end of the chase, and was already sickened by the kill.”

Image from swallace99's flickr photostream

One character succinctly sums up the discrepancy between Smiley’s looks and his intellect: “Looks like a frog, dresses like a bookie, and has a brain I’d give my eyes for.” It’s certainly possible that the author feels the same way about his character. He may ridicule him in his descriptions, but at the same time I suspect le Carré may want to be Smiley as much as Ian Fleming wanted to be James Bond. Fleming’s alter ego was a man of action who lived the adventures the author dreamt of during his deskbound war—a classic schoolboy fantasy; le Carré’s alter ego is a man of intellect, but perhaps more crucially, a man of staunch convictions that the author, belonging to another generation who never fought a noble war, simply cannot subscribe to. If Smiley is a clergyman, le Carré is the lapsed parishioner who envies his faith, but is himself incapable of such devotion. But the later books better illustrate Smiley’s convictions.

At a scant 152 pages, A Murder of Quality is a breezy read. It’s light-weight entertainment with a fun mystery and some biting social satire sure to have readers laughing aloud, but it’s certainly not essential le Carré. Die-hard fans of Smiley will enjoy seeing the familiar character in an unfamiliar setting and recognize recurring themes in the author’s work, but newcomers to the le Carré canon are encouraged to seek out his more substantial, far more essential work first—like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, or even Call for the Dead.

The Smiley Files
Part 1: George Smiley: An Introduction
Part 2: Movie Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Part 3: Book Review: Call for the Dead (1961)
Part 4: Movie Review: The Deadly Affair (1966)

New Spy DVDs Out This Week and Last

UPDATE:
New Spy DVDs Out This Week and Last

It Takes A Thief

Finally! It feels like we've been waiting years for It Takes a Thief! And I don't just mean the year-plus that it's been since the title was first announced as forthcoming by eOne Entertianment. I mean that this Sixties spy classic is long overdue on DVD in Region 1, and as one of the last major spy shows of that decade to be released, it's sort of hard to believe that it's finally here. (Now we just need Amos Burke, Secret Agent and T.H.E. Cat...) But it is, and in its three-season entirety all at once, no less!

eOne's 18-disc set  contains all 66 episodes of the 1968-70 ABC series starring Robert Wagner (The Pink Panther, Austin Powers) as master cat burglar Alexander Mundy, who's caught and pressed into service by SIA agent Noah Bain (Malachi Throne) to use his considerable skills for Uncle Sam as a thief-cum-spy. ("Let me get this straight.... You want me to steal?" clarifies a bemused Mundy when Throne makes his proposal.) The great Fred Astaire plays his dad (also a gentleman thief) on a handful of episodes during the third season, and guest stars include Senta Berger (Otley, The Quiller Memorandum), Adolfo Celi (Thunderball, Operation Kid Brother), Joseph Cotton (The Third Man), Bette Davis (Madame Sin) and even Peter Sellers (Casino Royale)  in dual roles. Extras on the discs include new (separate) half-hour interviews with Wagner and writer/producer Glen A. Larson, and the feature film version of the pilot episode, entitled Magnificent Thief, which runs almost 40 minutes longer than the TV version (which is also included). There's also a booklet with informative liner notes by Cinema Retro's Dean Brierly (who also curates the great Sixties Crime Films blog).

That's the good news. Now the bad. For starters, the retail price on this puppy is a heart attack-inducing $199.98. Luckily, that one's easily enough overcome since the set is available for half price at a number of online retailers including Deep Discount, WalMart and Amazon. (You can now support this blog again by buying things from my Amazon links; Amazon made peace with California, fortunately.) Not so easily overcome is the astoundingly atrocious packaging! Seriously, I think this is the worst packaging I've ever seen for a DVD set, even worse than that annoying box for The Wild Wild West: The Complete Series. I'm not a fan of unnecessarily bulky packaging to begin with, because I have a lot of DVDs and shelf space is always at a premium. But, unfortunately for people like me, the studios always put complete series sets in unnecessarily bulky long-boxes or cubes because they want them to take up a lot of shelf space at big box stores in the weeks leading up to Christmas. They also feel that their size should reflect the steep prices they like to charge for them, because they think consumers feel that way. Maybe some consumers do. I don't. But understanding all that, this one is still worse than most. At this excessive price point, the nearest comparison spy fans have are Time-Life's gift set releases of the complete series of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Get Smart. Both were clunky, but they were also clever (the former was shaped like an attache case and the latter mimicked the many doors leading into Control) and (the attache case's handle notwithstanding), for the most part, sturdy. The cube encasing these It Takes A Thief discs is neither clever nor sturdy. It's made out of the flimsiest cardboard I've ever seen used on a DVD box set. If you pick it up the wrong way, you'll crush it. On top of that, it's massively inefficient. When you open the box, you find a lot of empty space taken up by a cardboard placeholder and stupid trinkets like a set of four It Takes A Thief coasters (coasters!) and a "limited edition senitype." Senitypes are those individually numbered cardboard dealies with a little piece of 35mm film stuck into them. It's not even from an original print; it's a reproduction. They're the stupidest kind of artificial collectible I can think of... except maybe coasters. Is there really any demand for Robert Wagner coasters? It's almost insulting to think that eOne thought these cheapo items would justify such an excessive price point. But it's not the trinkets that really bother me. It's the fact that they take up so much space in the box... and yet not all of the space!

There's a tremendous amount of wasted, empty space inside this stupid box. And to make matters worse, the stuff that goes in it (including the actual discs, housed in square wallets, as well as the trinkets) don't all fit comfortably inside. It should be a simple matter of spacial logic, but it's not. One season's folder is awkwardly packed in sideways, because the others, which are stacked, don't fit snugly enough without that one wedged in there. But because the discs are in wallets and not Amrays, you can't really display them on their own without the packaging... so you're stuck with this chunky, inefficient cube. (Definitely hang onto that cardboard space-filler. You can use it to creatively rekajigger the arrangement as seen below for something that almost fits...) If these things matter to you, you really might be better off waiting and hoping that eOne releases more conveniently packaged individual seasons down the line. (That happened with Get Smart.)

However, the show itself is a lot of fun and a must in any Sixties spy fan's library. And from the brief bit I've sampled so far, the picture looks awfully good. [Scratch that! See below.] So while this box and its dumb trinkets are definitely not worth $200, the three seasons of the series itself are easily worth Amazon's $98.99. So put it on your Christmas list after all. Even if the packaging sucks, the actual content won't disappoint. Because it's a great thing to finally have It Takes A Thief on DVD.

UPDATE: I've watched a few more episodes now and I take back what I said about the picture looking good. The first episodes I sampled were all from Season One, and that does, indeed, look pretty good. Today I checked out some Season Three episodes, and the quality is horrible! Horrible enough to warrant this edit. I'm really not a stickler for top quality, either. A lot of the Eurospy titles I'm into are so obscure that you have to take what you can get, and I'm used to that. I'm okay with it, even. If those are all the elements available, we have to make do. But I cannot believe for a second that these discs from eOne represent the best elements available from a major American network series like It Takes A Thief! Were the original masters lost in that Universal fire a few years ago? I find it impossible to believe that the studio can't provide better elements otherwise. As is, these discs offer no improvement from the bootlegs die-hard fans likely already have. eOne claims on the packaging that they're "remastered," but they must have been remastered from an ancient video source by the look of it. They are definitely not restored in any way. Some people have complained about Warner Archives' non-remastered Girl From U.N.C.L.E. discs, but that's only because they were spoiled by Time-Life's beautifully restored Man From U.N.C.L.E. set. Girl looks fantastic compared to It Takes A Thief. I still believe that any It Takes A Thief is better than no It Takes A Thief, but at this steep price point, I can't really recommend upgrading if you've got episodes taped off TV. It's a real shame.

Page Eight

Last week saw the release from PBS of David Hare's elegant, adult BBC spy thriller Page Eight, which recently aired on PBS' Masterpiece Contemporary. This serious spy drama boasts an all-star cast to equal that of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, including Bill Nighy, Rachel Weisz, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, Ewan Bremner and Judy Davis. And it's really, really good. Hopefully I'll have a full review up soon. Nighy plays veteran MI5 officer Johnny Worricker. When his boss and best friend Benedict Baron (Gambon) dies suddenly, he leaves behind an inexplicable file, threatening the stability of the organization and the government itself. Johnny's colleagues and the Prime Minister (Fiennes, playing a PM so evil he could only be described as Voldemort in a tuxedo) all scramble to use the file to their own ends, but how will Johnny use it? Meanwhile, a seemingly chance encounter with his striking next-door neighbour and political activist Nancy Pierpan (Weisz) seems too good to be true, so he has her vetted by a former colleague (Bremner). Johnny is forced to take some extreme measures to find out the truth. Set in London and Cambridge, Page Eight is,  PBS puts it in their disc copy, "a contemporary spy film for the BBC, which addresses intelligence issues and moral dilemmas peculiar to the new century." It's also the closest thing on television right now to the serious spy series of the late Seventies and early Eighties like the original Tinker, Tailor and Smiley's People, as well as Game, Set and Match and Mr. Palfrey of Westminster. In other words, if you're looking for 24, look elsewhere. But if you're looking for intelligent, adult, thought-provoking spy drama, definitely give this disc a look. SRP is $24.99 for the DVD and $29.99 for the Blu-ray, though both are available for less from the usual online retailers. Unfortunately, there don't appear to be any features on this Region 1 release; at least the Region 2 DVD featured cast and crew interviews.

Bognor: The Complete Series

"THE SAINT, STEED, CALLAN, DICK BARTON... now the most unlikely super hero of them all comes to your screen!" blared ITV's announcement of their latest spy(ish) series, Bognor, in a February 1981 TV Times. Now Network reworks that hyperbole in their copy for its DVD release: "John Steed, Simon Templar, Dick Barton… and Simon Bognor. Following in the footsteps of some illustrious predecessors, the principal agent of the Special Investigations Department of the Board of Trade ventures forth to take on wrongdoers wherever they may lurk!" Since the odds are most people have never heard of him, obviously Bognor (played by David Horovitch) didn't really make it in such lofty company. But I'm intrigued by anyone who tries, so I'm curious to give this humorous take on the secret agent format a chance--especially since it does actually have a connection to one of those aforementioned TV heroes. Bognor is based on a series of novels by Tim Heald, author of John Steed: An Authorized Biography: Volume One - Jealous in Honour. That was a fictional biography of the famous Avenger, (in the vein of John Pearson's James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007) which also featured an unauthorized cameo from Bond. (Read more about it here.) Only one edition was ever printed and it's become quite hard to find, but it's worth tracking down for Avengers fans. It's good enough to inspire interest in Bognor. Here's the rest of Network's copy: "In [the serial] 'Unbecoming Habits,' [Bognor] poses as a CID officer to investigate a friary suspected of passing agricultural secrets to the Soviets; 'Deadline' sees him lowering journalistic standards as he goes undercover to probe the murder of a gossip columnist; in 'Let Sleeping Dogs Die' he trails ruthless pedigree dog smugglers; 'Just Desserts' finds him uncovering deadly intrigue in the world of haute cuisine. But will the assignments throw up more clues than Bognor can handle?" Network's 4-disc Region 2 PAL DVD set includes all 21 episodes of the series, which originally ran from 1981-82. The set is a web exclusive, available only from Network's website for £35.00. While you're there, you can also check out a video of the show's entertaining opening credits, which gleefully send up the title sequences of Sixties spy series.

Bulman: The Complete Second Series

Finally, another Network web exclusive came out last week that isn't principally a spy show, but still has enough Cold War-themed episodes to interest fans of British spy TV. Don Henderson stars in his third TV show playing the same part, classics-quoting detective George Bulman (previously seen in The XYY Man and Strangers, as well as the first series of Bulman), now retired from the police force, but still taking cases on a private basis--and taking unofficial assignments from Secret Service mandarin William Dugdale (Thorley Walters). It's a detective show, but like most UK detective shows of that era, detection and espionage often intersect. Ingrid Pitt, Robert Hardy and Iain Cuthbertson also appear. The 2-disc set (PAL, Region 2) containing all 6 episodes of Series 2 is available exclusively from Network's website for £15.00.

It's worth noting that Network's web exclusives are now available for a limited time only. Both Bognor and Bullman: The Complete Second Series will be discontinued on November 4, 2012.