The Little Drummer Girl

I am not Le Carre reader, but for me the show is very well done. It keeps me entertained, the acting is good and although political aspect is not easy to discuss, it doesn't side specifically on either side. It is just really good spies/agents historically related action drama. Very enjoyable.

This adaptation of one of John le Carre's long espionage novels is fantastic. It unravels several stores very slowly and in great detail, which you can only appreciate if a.) you've read the novel, or b.) you are watching the film for the second time. It is subtle and convoluted, but some of us love subtle and convoluted.

Beautiful cinematography, great script, top-notch acting, super story-telling. But you REALLY have to be patient and work for this one. In other words, just like the novels of Le Carre. Or the symphonies of Mahler.

So read the book first, or at least a summary of the extremely twisty plot, and then binge watch the whole thing over a snowy weekend when you weren't going anywhere anyway.

This series is not for a general audience who are not prepared to pay attention and appreciate nuance as the critical reception compared to general audience response shows. One example is of people not understanding Charlie's motivation in going with Becker and agreeing to her first mission even though her very first audtion scene in episode 1 shows that she is a fantasist who craves danger and excitement with her story being undercut with scenes showing the reality, people not getting this shows that most people do not want to put any effort into watching television and expect to be spoon fed at every point.

This show uses editing and cinematography to create atmosphere and to highlight the artifice of the spy world and of cinema, there are many points that are beautifully meta. For instance the scene at the Acropolis is artifice not only for the characters but also for us the audience playfully directed by Chan-Wook and elevated by the score. This show will be divisive but great art usually is, also the costumes are to die for!

This six part adaptation of John Le Carré's novel of the same title opens in late 1970s West Germany as a bomb explodes in the home of an Israeli diplomat. The Israeli secret service are determined to put a stop to the attacks, which they believe are being orchestrated by a particular Palestinian terrorist. To this end a small team works to identify somebody they can put undercover in the terrorist's organisation. They select Charlie Ross, an English actress with radical left-wing associations. She is approached and ultimately recruited but can they trust her not to side with the terrorists she is meant to be infiltrating when even she doesn't know which side she will back in the end.

People expecting the style of the recent BBC adaption of 'The Night Manager' might be a little disappointed but anybody wanting a gripping drama that really captures the feel of the era should love this. South Korean Director Park Chan-wook, best known fairly extreme films like 'Oldboy' and 'Sympathy for Mister Vengeance', shows he can do restraint as we are gradually introduced to the protagonists and watch Charlie being recruited; this is not a rapid procedure. The deeper she gets the more the tension rises; approaching the final episode I had no idea how it would end for Charlie. The cast is good; especially Florence Pugh who excels as Charlie. Overall I'd say this series is well worth the effort; I really enjoyed it.

There are some sublime moments in this six part series, an adaptation of the John le Carré novel directed by Park Chan-wook. None are finer than the scene with the shadows on the ancient buildings at the top of the Acropolis in Athens, but I have to say, Florence Pugh getting rubbed down on the beach or playing acoustic guitar and singing the folk song "Murder of Maria Marten" come pretty damn close. My goodness, she's fantastic here. Watching her act as someone acting as a Palestinian sympathizer to infiltrate their ranks is mesmerizing, and she fully inhabits her character.

There is real tension as this story plays out, with the Israeli Mossad agents (led by Michael Shannon and Alexander Skarsgård) trying to track down a smart bomber (Charif Ghattas) and the organization which also includes his siblings (Lubna Azabal and Amir Khoury). As the Palestinians use young women who have been groomed to plant the bombs, the Israelis try to use the same playbook and implant a young woman (Pugh) amongst them.

The series is a little slow moving and it was probably guilty of being elongated, exacerbated by a couple of the early episodes feeling too talky. It's biggest issue, however, is in how improbable the story is, and its central premise was one I could never truly buy into. As early as episode two we can see why the Israelis have chosen the young woman, but it's certainly not clear why she would choose to go along with it, especially considering her progressive, pro-Palestinian views. To accept incredible danger and put up with a creepy backstory in the process did not at all seem plausible. By episode four we finally see her questioning it all, something that should have happened much earlier, but to have the reason be an attraction to the Israeli agent was unconvincing. It was also a little annoying when she later developed feelings for one of the Palestinians, which felt like tawdry melodrama by the author. There are other elements which didn't ring true, such as why the youngest Palestinian brother would have given up the information as he did, but the whopper is the entire arc of Pugh's character.

I also wondered if the film had a balanced view of the two sides in this struggle, seeing as how the Israeli protagonists are cleverly hunting down Palestinian terrorists, even if the latter are humanized and some of the Israeli atrocities are expressed through anecdotes. It's a mixed bag on that front, and let's just say, felt awfully tidy at the end. There were some really nice bits though, including the noxious anti-Semitism in the British Intelligence officer, and a fantastic dream sequence of the Israeli agent shaking hands with the Palestinian and the latter bursting into flames, saying 'Al Nakba' ("The Catastrophe," referring to what happened in 1948). Overall, worth watching for the production value, and Florence Pugh.