The Secret Agent

We enjoyed the production, the filming and actors were excellent though we thought it a bit slow. I became interested in the locations because of a book I was reading that mentioned there had never been a "Great Southern Railway" so the main line railway station with that title was a bit of a mystery. The station building and interior appears to be Kelvinhall Art Gallery in Glasgow, presumably with some CGI to change the name on the building. The opulent "embassy" staircase seems to be Glasgow City Hall, and the "Windsor Castle" ship seen at the docks looks like the ship purchased in 2014 by the Royal Yacht Britannia organisation, so are the docks buildings at Leith?

This series is based in the Conrad short novel about a bumbling anarchist ring in London one of whom also operatrs for the Russian embassy in London.

What unfolds as a further bumbled terror attack is actually a double decoy to firce the British to tighten up their security which is threatening the security if the Russian state from the threat of anarchy.

This double decoy is what creates the confusion snd the complicated early part if the plot.

In essence its more of a satirical perspective on state and anarchy rather than a tale of international Espionage.

Despite the prominence of descent British TV actors, the series is flawed by the weakness of the storyline and doesn't quite deliver to the audience what they expect.

Not many I would watch twice but this I did Glad to do so production and acting was enough for a repeat look Ps my phone means I cant see what I hve typed.

I had a look over some of the reviews and wondered why they were so hard on this show. After all, it's the type of characters in this show that started The First World War. Few shows actually show us this world. And the characters, given it's such an undeveloped area of period drama, are, for me, hard to beat, bordering on truly original, and brilliantly enacted. The original author is, after all, part of the literary canon for a reason This is comparable to Charles Dickens, but stands on its own merits. The Secret Agent a period piece like nothing I'd encountered before. There are no heroes, only flawed but passionate people, dangerously entwined with the lives of essentially honest people who are, for the most part, unaware of the dangers brewing beneath their floorboards. I really don't know how anyone could have not been totally refreshed by this cinematic experience. Like all good British productions there is a wealth of detail and realism that make this story a true transportation back to the period, with a ripping yarn to keep one glued. And there is a moral here too, relevant to any time.

The Secret Agent based on Joseph Konrad's work of the same name, for me at least, is rather uninspiring and badly dated.

This series, on first view, feels like a "dull artifact" that expresses stale, somewhat paranoid sentiments, from a bygone era.

Unlike similar series, such as Reilly Ace of Spies, there's nothing overly exciting on offer here. Reilly beautifully captured the essence of an early period of political intrigue and built an enjoyable tale around it. By contrast, The Secret Agent, simply feels like a proxy for the exhumed opinions of long dead political elites, afraid of the Communist bogey man.

The acting in this series and production values, as is often the case in the UK, are of a high standard. Its not for me, the performances, that are in question, however. The whole proposition seems anachronistic, when filtered through 21st century eyes. The Secret Agent, might have worked as a satire or adapted to a comedic format but, as serous drama, to me, it feels like an absurdity. Five out of ten.