The Secret Agent

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.

This is an interesting period mini-season drama. Acorn dramas tend to below budget, and family friendly productions. This drama takes place in Victorian England in 1885. The acting is good, as are the costumes, and production values. The plot kept me involved, but the story is not so much a spy thriller, but more of a character study. The series' title would lead a viewer to think that the story involves a lot of spy drama and action. Actually, the story revolves around one character, with some police work and international politics. I think the series would have been better with a couple fewer episodes, or, could have been a full length feature film. Overall, the series is okay, and I didn't feel like it wasted my time. But I don't feel as though I would have missed anything if I hadn't seen it. For me, this is another "Meh" series.

I'm puzzled by the reviews that claim all of Conrad's brilliant story have been abandoned. Utterly untrue. All the main points of the original story are here. The betrayals, the ethical compromises, the cowardice. Not a single one missing. What had changed is how the story is told. Conrad jumped back and forth, a device that works better on writing than on TV. There are always some compromise made when covering a written story to a screen of any size. Those made here seen more than reasonable to me. The result is a thoughtful carefully constructed story that resists the urge to pick up the tempo just for the sake of a little "excitement". Some will find the pace slow, but it builds from the meaningless pretense of the characters lives and the mundane tempo of real life.

Some lovely performances by the whole cast. No one is cast as either superhero or supervillain. These are ordinary people of no great distinction, no matter thier place in life. Both evil and justice are flawed and banal.

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?

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.