Trailer: Len Deighton's SS-GB (Updated With Widescreen Version)

The BBC has finally put out a trailer for their adaptation of Len Deighton's alternate history spy novel SS-GB (first reported on in November 2014). Set in an alternate 1941 in which Germany successfully invaded Britain, the story follows a police detective (Sam Riley) in Nazi-occupied London as his routine murder investigation leads him into a conspiracy of espionage, atomic secrets, and the fate of the world. Kate Bosworth co-stars. Regular James Bond scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade penned the 5-part miniseries, which premieres this month in the U.K. While The Weinstein Company partnered with the Beeb for U.S. distribution, no American network or premiere date has yet been announced. TWC and BBC last partnered on War and Peace, which aired domestically on Lifetime.

Tradecraft: Purvis and Wade Adapt Deighton for BBC

Variety reports that James Bond screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (Skyfall, Casino Royale, The World Is Not Enough) have signed on to write a 5-episode miniseries for BBC One based on Ipcress File author Len Deighton's novel SS-GB. As much as I love Deighton, I have to confess I've never read that one because his alternate history novels never interested me as much as his Cold War spy thrillers. So I'll rely on the trade's plot summary. "It is set in an imaginary Britain controlled by the Nazis, if Germany had occupied the country. It centers on a police detective caught between the Nazis and the British resistance." But the alternate history setting doesn't mean that it's not a spy story! Speaking to The Guardian, Purvis and Wade called SS-GB "a brilliant tale of espionage that dares to think the unthinkable." I'll certainly have to read the book before this miniseries airs in 2015! I can't help but be a tad disappointed that this isn't news on the new television adaptation of Deighton's masterful Bernard Samson cycle that was first reported on last year, but on which there have been no updates ever since, but I guess I should just be glad that any Deighton is coming to television. And this sounds like fertile ground for a series, for sure! Besides their contributions to the last five Bond movies, Purvis and Wade's other genre credits include Johhny English and The Italian Job remake (on which they ended up uncredited).

Billion Dollar Brain Coming to Blu-ray!

Harry Palmer is finally coming to Blu-ray in the United States! And somewhat surprisingly, not in The Ipcress File* or Funeral in Berlin, but the much more divisive third film in Harry Saltzman's other spy series, Billion Dollar Brain. (Which, on any given day, could easily be my own personal favorite of the three.) Kino Lorber will release Ken Russell's brilliant and beautiful Len Deighton adaptation Billion Dollar Brain in high definition on October 7. (There will also be a DVD edition, as the old MGM release is long out of print.) If you've never seen this Michael Caine masterpiece, read my review here to understand why this is such great news! And if you have, then why not go ahead and pre-order it now on Amazon? So far the only extra announced is the theatrical trailer, but the real question on spy fans' minds is will this version contain the half minute or so of footage excised from previous DVD editions in all regions? Probably not, since the footage in question contains a clip of the Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night along with its prohibitively expensive music. But perhaps Kino has found a way to clear this music? Even if they haven't, it's still well worth owning Billion Dollar Brain in high definition--especially with such pretty cover art! Spy fans and fans of Sixties capers might be interested to know that the company will also release Topkapi on Blu-ray the same day.

*Though it's never been officially released in America, The Ipcress File is available on Blu-ray as a region-free import.

Bernard Samson Returns to Television!

Well, here's the story to beat as the best spy news of the year! The Deighton Dossier reports that Len Deighton's greatest character (yes, even greater than the unnamed hero of The Ipcress File and its sequels) is returning to television... for an 18-episode maxi-series courtesy of Slumdog Millionaire writer Simon Beaufoy! The Hollywood Reporter reports that Clerkenwell Films, the production company behind Misfits, is developing an 18-episode maxi-series based on Deighton's classic Cold War series featuring Bernard and Fiona Samson. The 10-volume series encompasses three separate trilogies (Berlin Game, Mexico Set, and London Match; Spy Hook, Spy Line and Spy Sinker; Faith, Hope, and Charity) and a standalone prequel, Winter, which comes between the first two trilogies. These books, which brilliantly bridge the desk and field sides of the genre, are among my favorite spy novels ever. One day I shall get around to examining them in detail on this site, but suffice it to say that they are absolutely essential reading for any and all fans of espionage fiction or students of the Cold War. Again and again I see The Ipcress File listed as Deighton's best book (and there's no denying that it's a great read and made a wonderful movie), but to me the Samson cycle is the author's unequaled masterwork, and I cannot wait to see it adapted in its entirety. (The first three novels were filmed as Game Set Match for ITV in 1988, starring Ian Holm as Bernard, a series Deighton was reportedly unhappy with.) Oscar-winning screenwriter Beaufoy encapsulates everything that's wonderful about these novels very succinctly in the press release:

Deighton's masterful series of novels draws the hidden political map of the late twentieth century. It is all here: murders, honey-traps and spy swaps, the double-dealing and manoeuvring of nations jousting for position at the height of the Cold War, with Bernard Samson, the Bond with brains, giving it an almost Chandleresque sense of cool. The novels have at their heart a love story of Shakespearian proportions, taking in passion, betrayal, loyalty and the lengths we will go for the love of country and the love of one another.

Deighton himself is fully behind the new adaptation. A few years ago, Quentin Tarantino expressed an interest in filming the first three novels, but the author has always held out for an offer from a film company who wanted to adapt the entire series. Now that's come. My only regret is that it's just 18 episodes. Assuming these are hour-long episodes, and assuming Winter isn't part of the deal, that only allows two hours per book. The 1988 series was able to devote four to each of the first three volumes. But I trust Beaufoy to figure that out! And who knows? If the series is a success, perhaps we'll see Winter become a miniseries in its own right down the road. With a story spanning five tumultuous decades, it certainly could.

This is now officially the spy project I am most excited about on the foreseeable horizon. I hope it comes to fruition!

Len Deighton Writes About James Bond in Brand New E-Book

The Deighton Dossier posted a very exciting announcement last week about a brand-new e-book by Len Deighton about Ian Fleming, Kevin McClory and James Bond! Now let's just take apart that sentence for a second. The first amazing nugget of information for spy fans is... Len Deighton has written a new book! Okay, okay, it's an e-book, and only a short one at that (Amazon calls these short titles "Kindle Singles")... but it still marks the first new publication from one of the world's foremost spy writers in nearly seventeen years! (The final Bernard Samson novel, Charity, came out in 1996.) Then the second amazing thing in that sentence is that this e-book finds one of my very favorite spy writers, Deighton, writing about another, Fleming! Historically, Deighton was part of the group of espionage novelists including John le Carré and John Gardner who came along in the Sixties writing books that were direct reactions to, or perhaps even rebellions against, Fleming's James Bond novels. Deighton's unnamed spy, star of his first several novels (immortalized on film by Michael Caine as Harry Palmer), was the polar opposite of 007—and very intentionally so. While Deighton no doubt respects Fleming, his creation and the popularity it brought the genre he writes in, his overall aversion to Fleming's fiction seems not to have abated over the years. But very little is said about Fleming overall. Instead, Deighton's Kindle Single James Bond: My Long And Eventful Search For His Father deals with the cinematic 007. And Deighton had far more involvement with that incarnation of the character, some of which he reveals here for the first time. With Harry Saltzman, who produced the Palmer movies, he made some small contributions to the script for From Russia With Love. And for Kevin McClory, who Deighton knew well, he contributed to one of the many incarnations of Warhead, the film that eventually became Never Say Never Again. This e-book makes a great read, and is very informative. Since Deighton knew some of the figures involved better than others, a somewhat slanted opinion is to be expected. Based on my own research over the years, I'm not sure I agree with all of his conclusions (but then I wasn't there and he was!), but I'm still thrilled that he wrote them up and published them for us to read. I highly recommend this e-book to fans of Bond and Deighton alike... and therefore to all spy fans. It should be noted that you don't need a Kindle device to read these books. There's a Kindle app available for many smart phones, and a reader for PCs as well. So there's no reason not to spend the $1.99 on Amazon!

New Spy Comics Out Today: The Coldest City and Others

It's a big week for spy comics. First and foremost, today sees the release of a new spy graphic novel by one of my favorite comics writers, Antony Johnston (Three Days In Europe). After doing a great job with Greg Rucka's Queen & Country (in fact, Johnston is the only author besides Rucka to ever pen a a Q&C story story) and Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider, Johnston introduces the world to his own spy creation, Lorainne Broughton, in The Coldest City from Oni Press. Years in the making (I first blogged about it back in 2009 when the title was "Cold City"), The Coldest City is a rare spy comic in the cerebral Len Deighton tradition set in Berlin during the final days of the Cold War and told in stark black and white, appropriately reflecting both the time and the place. On the eve of the fall of the Wall, there is one last spy story to be told, and Johnston tells it as a labor of love. I know that he's a huge fan of the genre, and that comes through in his comic. Johnston provides the twists and turns you'd expect from any spy comic, along with the wall crossings and the requisite corpses, but he also provides panel after panel of MI6 honchos at desks yelling at each other--and regular readers of this blog will know that I enjoy that sort of office politics in a spy story every bit as much as a bout of gunplay! (More, actually.) Fans of Greg Rucka and Len Deighton won't want to miss this. Here's the trailer:

Also out today from Marvel Comics is the second issue of Garth Ennis's new Fury MAX series (first announced a year ago), also set during the Cold War. I was not a fan of Ennis' last attempt at a Nick Fury MAX miniseries (MAX is Marvel's mature readers imprint), and therefore went into this one with diminished expectations. But man did it blow me away! The first issue was everything I could possibly hope for from a serious Nick Fury espionage comic. Taking a cue from both The Ugly American (one of my favorite books ever) and The Quiet American, the promising series looks much closer in spirit to Ennis' serious historical war comics than his previous over-the-top MAX material. If the premiere issue is indicative of the issues to come, then I very much want to see this miniseries turn into an ongoing series, because the is exactly the sort of Nick Fury story I'd gladly tune in for month after month. (And the Cold War lasted a long time, in a lot of theaters...)

And finally, also from Marvel, and also from a maverick creator well known for his mature readers work (but decidedly not set in the Cold War), is issue 2 of Mark Millar's The Secret Service. This is the series he dreamed up with X-Men: First Class director Matthew Vaughn, and which Vaughn is mulling as his possible next movie after the X-Men sequel. The first issue was wildly uneven, but the artwork by Watchmen's Dave Gibbons was phenomenal and the premise of a delinquent London hoodie kid training to be the next James Bond is sound, so I'm definitely planning to sample the second issue.

More Len Deighton Reissues in August

Following their first wave of Len Deighton titles last year (which included four of the "secret files" novels, The IPCRESS File, Horse Under Water, Funeral in Berlin and Billion-Dollar Brain), publisher Sterling has a second wave of Deighton reissues hitting American shelves in August. This wave includes the first trilogy of titles in the author's tour de force Bernard Samson cycle, Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match—the "Game, Set, Match" trilogy. Other books getting the trade paperback treatment in August are the prequel to the Samson cycle, Winter: The Tragic Story of a Berlin Family 1899-1945 (written and best read after London Match but before the next novel, Spy Hook), the speculative fiction novel about an alternate reality where Germany won WWII and Britain is occupied by Nazis, SS-GB, and the standalone spy thriller XPD. The publisher is also reissuing Alistair Maclean's catalog, which includes a number of spy titles like The Satan Bug, Ice Station Zebra, When Eight Bells Toll and Where Eagles Dare.

The Bernard Samson novels, for my money, are Deighton's best work, and right up there with Smiley and Bond among the greatest spy novels ever written. If you've never read them, be sure to pick up these new editions as they come out! Like their UK counterparts, each of these Deighton books features an insightful new introduction by the author.

You can read more about Len Deighton and his creations on the excellent Deighton Dossier and Harry Palmer Movie Site.