London Spy

As a gay person who consumed a lot of Japanese yaoi (pseudo-gay manga and anime with some soft to hard sex scenes) and mystery narratives, I was shocked when I watched this BBC short series for the first time. The whole plot is like that of a typical Japanese yaoi or mystery story: it is very much driven by the emotions and the perspective of the protagonist who tries to figure out what his (deceased?) boyfriend Alex was hiding or who tried to kill (?) him. Even the very disturbing encounter with Alex mother is so well staged and told that it took my breath away. The dimly mysterious atmosphere and the constant 'not- knowing' of Danny AND the viewer is very exiting and leaves one wanting to know all the secrets hid behind a curtain of lies.

There's absolutely no denying this is another example of a wonderfully made British drama production. It is beautifully filmed. The acting marvelous. The directing and editing probably won awards. The subject not one that could even have been tackled a generation ago.

But ...

But, although my wife and I were mesmerized by the first three episodes and absolutely enthralled by the production and couldn't wait for the next one, during the fourth episode I started to get one of those "oh-oh" feelings that the whole plot was just going off the rails. It just felt like the writer wasn't too sure where to do with the whole thing and how to resolve what he started and just making it up minute to minute.

During the final episode that fear was confirmed as the two of us just sat there in silence enduring what we were now committed to watching as we'd made it through the first part of the series. At the end of the episode, I just turned it off in disbelief and my wife summed it up with something like, "what a waste of time that was." So much potential with what started out so promisingly but it all spiraled its way downhill in a painful fizzle for the final 45 minutes. So disappointed. In some ways, the final episode reminded me of bad science fiction it was so silly.

Look, IF you've started watching it and wonder what is happening, by all means finish it. However, if you are reading these reviews prior to seeing episode 1 then both of us would suggest you don't waste your time as you will find yourself let down when it reaches the end.

London SPY is an exceptionally well-filmed thriller centering on the protagonist Danny Holt (Ben Whishaw) and his quest to find out precisely who his lover Alex/ Alistair (Edward Holcroft) actually is, and whether Alex has actually been murdered or not.

That quest takes Danny into a dark and frequently confusing netherworld in which nothing is quite as it seems and truth is indistinguishable from falsehood. Although clearly an innocent party, Danny's ignorance of Alex/ Alistair's past lands him in trouble; he is suspected of having committed murder, even though we are well aware that he is an innocent party - a young, rootless man searching for stability in an often hostile world.

Jakob Verbruggen's six-part thriller unfolds slowly, with the camera focused tightly on the protagonists' facial expressions as they act and react to a variety of different situations. This makes for a claustrophobic atmosphere; we feel as imprisoned as the characters within webs of deceit that are rendered even more confusing by a willful dedication towards perpetuating falsehoods. When Danny visits Alistair/ Alex's parents (Charlotte Rampling, Nicholas Chagrin), he is told a tissue of lies; and subsequently warned off further inquiries by a professional hitperson (Clarke Peters). Needless to say Danny continues his quest for the truth, but ends up becoming more deeply enmeshed within the webs.

Laurie Rose's cinematography is especially effective; his camera swirls around the characters, emphasizing their lack of certainty; and frequently indulges in long tracking shots as the characters move down long corridors or through gardens. This stylistic device is ironic; a tracking shot implies forward movement, almost as if a plot-complication might be resolved in the process. In London SPY, however, the tracking shots lead to nothing, and thereby emphasizing the absence of truth that dominates the plot.

This series might be described as moody, almost reflective in tone, concentrating as much on the characters' emotions as the plot. We share with Danny a desire to unravel the plot, but at the same time realize how easy it is to be bamboozled, especially when there are so many people wanting to create smokescreens, whether verbal or physical. The center of London has seldom seemed so sinister, with the Thameside lights in the background contrasting with the nighttime shadows in which Danny spends much of his time.

London SPY requires our attention, but rewards us for our efforts. Definitely worth staying with.

An initial warning: there are explicit scenes of male nudity and overt gay sex interaction in the first chapter which may be shocking or disturbing to certain people. I have found them necessary to the plot and by any means with a pornographic intention as someone has suggested here. If you feel strongly against these scenes, perhaps you should skip them, but I would still advise to see the show. It would be a pity to miss such an extraordinary miniseries on behalf of some minutes of physical love between the male characters.

***

There are many ways of setting the table for a spy story. This does it in a quite unusual, anti-Guy Ritchie, anti-Mission Impossible way.

You enter London Spy not through a frenzied mosaic of espionage clues, not through a crazy car/plane/chopper persecution set in a fancy city, not through a climactic adrenaline first scene before the title sequence.

Instead, you will be guided by a "slow motion narrative" through a deeply intimate and loving gay relationship between two strangers. The enigma is rather in the brief emotional hints than in object clues until, in the last couple of minutes in the first episode, the knot is revealed and by then you are already convinced that you are watching something really different and impressive.

The cast and all the actors are simply perfect.

Ben Whishaw brings us a one-man festival in himself, what a talented actor and what a wonderful composition! I had never seen Edward Holcroft before but I have to say he makes a perfect Alex here, as tense and hermetic as vulnerable at the same time.

Plus a great, unreadable Jim Broadbent who disturbs and intrigues you from the first scene. And Charlotte Rampling with her habitual show of performative prowess and depth.

As a bonus, it upturns several stereotypes. First, the matter of homosexuality in a spy context. Second, the fact that such homosexuality is male, and presented as a stylized, highly intimate love story. Then, the kind of intelligence at work in the deductive unveiling of the truth, which is not the usual "cold, analytic, razor-blade precise wit" in the espionage movies. Instead, we see a man equipped with traditionally female cognitive resources: emotional intelligence, insight, keen observation, intuition... This came to me as a surprise. (Kudos to Ben Whishaw)

The show is running on the air as I write this, but so far it is an alluring, impressive series whose end, I hope, will not disappoint and live up to the wonderful expectations set up in the first episodes.

A late comment, but I actually did watch this series when it was new, and obsessively, repeating episodes multiple times - at first. Now I'm coming back to it and rewatching it on Netflix streaming. I thought it was going to have lost its magic but no, for all its flaws it's still compulsively watchable.

Many of the things said here that are contradictory are also true. The writing is pretentious and overwrought, but it's also a haunting and entrancing story. Yes, it's utterly absurd the things that happen, but some of the most basic emotions out of which the story is built - the loneliness and need, the romantic affair - are very real and memorable. Perhaps the relationship between Danny and Scottie is a gay old man-young man cliché, but it's still touching and real. The gay spy theme runs up into dangerous clichés too, but still is highly original. And after all, despite the negative stereotypes some have pointed to, this is a spy story where the gayness is not just a weapon or a liability but simply central, a given, and in that regard, Whishaw as an out gay actor can be proud to have played such a marvelous role in it. Above and beyond any specifics of the story there is simply the fact of Danny as a complex, attractive character, basically a mess, and yet utterly sexy and sweet, the kind of gay young man an old dear like Scottie would be happy to love and protect.

Edward Holcorft I'm uncomfortable about. The actor seems so stiff and affected. But that also fits the character of Alex perfectly well: the flaw is in the conception of Alex by the minds behind the series. Jim Broadbent is a consummate pro. But obviously it's Ben Whishaw who makes it all worthwhile and he's touching, real, and as the boyish gay young man, utterly adorable. My excessive fascination with the character of Danny that Ben plays is what kept me coming back over and over, but it was outmatched by my pleasure in Whishaw's authentic and appealing performance, which is one of the best I've seen him in, and he's always good. He's one of the best actors of his generation, some even think the best. There are more mercurial and astonishing ones like Tom Hardy. None so cuddly as Ben though. Sorry I didn't see him as Hamlet.

Then Charlotte Rampling comes along and though it's one of her "standard" roles there's nothing standard about her, she's terrifyingly off-putting, in top form. The second, post-Alex phase investigating Alex is very good. In it, everything in the first phase is undercut and mystified, and this is good, through it seems more programmatic and more far-fetched than the first. It's the last phase where things go down the rabbit hole into sheer nonsense. And you cease to be invested in the story as you were early on. Perhaps you knew this was going to happen. But you liked the overwrought-ness, the camp, so much you accepted anything, and the acting and settings and cinematography were so classy, it was okay. Then it's just bonkers, and it's all more or less thrown away.

Everything is totally stylized. Some of the editing I find annoying, like the jump cuts and paralleled lines of dialogue in the gay love sequence. It all becomes cloying, too-too. And yet, and yet, guilty pleasure though it may be, it's compulsively watchable. I do not know about the other work of the much talked about Tom Rob Smith. I know director Jakob Verbruggen has done other good things. But in "London Spy," the story eventually deteriorates into the preposterous so you don't care about it. Yet it's made its impression, for the excessive but compelling craftsmanship and the magical acting of Ben Whishaw. For all its flaws this weaves a magic spell and leaves a special memory.