Round-up Review: London Spy

It’s been an interesting few weeks for those of us following BBC2’s new drama, London Spy. In just five short episodes, we’ve seen gruesome sex murders, hangings and so, so many shots of the London skyline. In between Ben Whishaw’s Danny chain-smoking while atmospheric music plays and seemingly more flashbacks than new material, we’re somehow caught in the middle of a plotline involving HIV, the gutter press and intelligence agencies.

To be fair, it has been a fairly dramatic mini-series, with its fair share of tense moments and some excellent acting from Whishaw, Jim Broadbent and Charlotte Rampling. The stunning London rooftop locations could have been superb, too, had they been a little more underplayed. But the series loses points for its overly ruminative bent – Whishaw finally lets up on the cigarettes in the latter episodes but we still see his silent face looking miserable while he contemplates the train-wreck which is now his life. And let’s not forget the sheer implausibility of this story, which might be forgivable were it not for the fact that everything else in the series is tremendously grimy. The idea of a genius spy dying in mysterious circumstances might have played slightly better in a bit more of a Bondian atmosphere: Whishaw’s constant stubble rather ruins any glamour which might be brewing in the background.

The ending, too, was almost unfathomable, with one final flashback without warning to the very beginning of the story. Like the final chapters of Mockingjay, one begins to lose track of who’s alive or dead, conspirator or truth-seeker. But if the final intention of director Jacob Verbruggen in producing the ending was to confuse the viewer and be hugely unfulfilling, he was enormously successful in that regard.

Perhaps the series needed another few episodes: the storyline was rushed, certain characters could have done with more development (Mark Gatiss’s brief turn as the lecherous Rich comes to mind) and the viewer is bombarded with so many conflicting viewpoints that it is very difficult to know who to believe. In the end, even though the characters were perhaps the best thing about the affair, it was still a long and dolorous trek with very little reward in the end. As the oft-quoted slogan in the series goes, “ambitious but lacks conviction”.