L'Agent secret

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.

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.

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.

It's a strange and unconvincing story, but it has its points of interest, as it deals with the murky late Victorian world of mysterious anarchists.

Unfortunately, this BBC version is not very well done. The main problem is that it is too slow and does not flow.

Stephen Graham has a difficult part as Inspector Heat, whose doings and motivations are often obscure. Why he further encumbers this with a heavy Scouse accent is one of the mysteries of the series (I know he's from Liverpool, but he's good at accents).

As for Vicky McClure, what is her accent? It's unrelated to the speech of the rest of her screen family and also seems anachronistic to me (too many glottal stops and -d- for -t- in places). Is it that she is just using her own accent (and does she perhaps do so in every part she gets)?

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?