Sleepers

Loved this mini series and unfortunately do not have a good tape of it. Does anyone know if it is available anywhere on DVD or VHS--it should be! one of the best ever from BBC shown on US PBS. I thought the casting, plot, and mix of humor and serious jabs at the warriors of the cold war was great. With all the crud out on DVD it is hard to believe that this is not available somewhere somehow for purchase. I saw it years ago, has it been re-broadcast more recently on any PBS stations, or does BBC America re-run it ever? Now that WETA Radio in DC has sold out and gone totally "news" and talk there is a desperate need for good entertainment like this mini series. I have searched for years and would greatly appreciate any help in procuring a copy of this somehow.

A clever concept about people left behind - except that they aren't: they have left behind their past, and when they are called upon to act roles ordained in the past, they simply won't. A witty and human subversion of the Ian Fleming/John Le Carre spy story, a tale of what goes right and what goes wrong, of cultural clashes, class warfare (remember that?), identity, politics, greed and happiness. The cultural artefact (I can't spoil it) that sends the storyline spinning into a new orbit is chosen with wit and imagination. Nigel Havers has rarely been so funny although Warren Clarke has always been capable of dominating the screen in comedy like a working-class Jack Nicholson. A mini like no other - because it never flags in pace, intensity, observation or commentary.

This mini series is endlessly entertaining, whether you're a student of the Cold War, an Anglophile, or an espionage buff. It captures brilliantly the guarded peace developing among the world's remaining superpowers in the last days of the Soviet Union, and it makes you howl with laughter in the process.

Havers and Clarke (who was also a dialogue coach on the project) play Soviet agents sent underground as sleepers to the UK in the Mod '60s by enigmatic KGB guru Gough. Now it's the 1980s, glasnost has begun the Soviet thaw, Gough is shut up in a mental hospital, and Havers and Clarke have become very British indeed--the former a successful investment banker, and the latter a union boss in northern England (married and with children, no less). The sleeper project is discovered in Moscow, and the two agents are contacted, much to their dismay (as Havers observes, why should he give up his posh and comfortable life "for a bowl of red cabbage and a bed-sit in Vladivostok?"). Hilarity ensues, as an uptight KGB agent (a woman who makes Ninotchka come off like Pollyanna) is dispatched to bring the wayward sleepers home. Add in a KGB contact who looks just like Gorbachev (though named Chekhov--"No relation"), classic odd-couple pairings, a suspicious mother-in-law, and Britain's World Cup star Bobby Charlton, and you've got something worth watching, my friend.

Every couple of years or so, I send off a message to the BBC, recommending this title for VHS or DVD release, and I always get a kind note thanking me for my interest. So far, no result. I can't even begin to imagine why. Should this surface again on television, run for your VCRs and DVRs!

"Sleepers" is the story of two KGB moles sent to Britain in the mid-60s for the purpose of establishing legends. After twenty-five years the KGB has forgotten all about these guys, but that is soon to change. The KGB accidentally stumbles across their identities in a database and starts researching who they are and why the were sent to England. The KGB now wants to find them and bring them back. Only problem is these two guys have essentially crossed cultural lines and become more British than Russian and, needless to say, do not want to return to the Soviet Union. This story is both funny and somewhat melancholy. Superb performances by all the cast. A great story that puts a rather novel spin on the spy genre. You won't be disappointed.

The most amusing mini-series about the end of the Cold War to be done in 20 years!

In 1966, an ambitious Soviet agent sends two sleepers (spies who infiltrate a country and do not act until they receive their activation code-word) to England on an undisclosed mission. Unbeknownst to the agents, their controller is imprisoned during an official purge, and they never receive their activation code! Now, 25 years later, the records of the mission have been unearthed but the agents are nowhere to be found--or, at least, that's the way they want it! One is a wealthy stockbroker, the other a married brewery worker with three children!

Perhaps the funniest scene is when the KGB agent-in-residence-in-London, Victor Chekhov (David Calder) is confiding in the situation to his British counterpart (William Chubb). Both men are mooning over how dull the spy world has become, compared to the past. "Yeah," says Chekhov, wistfully, "remember the Good Old Days?"

Bear in mind, this is not a slam-bang action series, but a touching human comedy. The sleeper agents are two men who until now have been happy with their lives. But now, with their buried pasts starting to catch up to them, they have to decide what to do. It's humorous, and at the same time ironic because it's really a story about how change comes to all things.