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The Sandbaggers - Series 3
RRP: £19.99
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Stay With It
Review date: 2008-04-04 Rating: 10 out of 10
These 2 discs contain the last 7 episodes of this most compelling and watchable of spy stories. There is always a danger that the creativity of any TV series will peter out as it reaches its close: it happened, to some extent, to both Dalgleish and to Morse in their day. So too here, but only very slightly. Indeed, it might be argued that one episode was ahead of its time: In "My Name Is Anna Wiseman", a part-Jewish part-Russian born-in-exile wishes to go to the Soviet Union as a deep cover "sleeper", to activate or energize the connected human rights and dissident movement(s). The story came out around 1980, not long after the Helsinki Accord (the name Sakharov is even mentioned in this episode!). Burnside (Roy Marsden) wants to go ahead, but, characteristically, tries to sell the idea to his superiors as a straight spy sleeper scenario. Burnside thinks that the dissident movement etc might obliquely topple the Soviet monolith. An impressive storyline, bearing in mind that Andrei Amalrik's "Will The Soviet Union Survive Until 1984" had not long come out (the author soon after dying in a "car crash" in Spain) and was thought to have a silly title...yet indeed the USSR only survived a few more years.
As a matter of fact, I myself remember being taken, about 1982, to a quite large, well-equipped bookshop in a cellar in Pimlico in London, unannounced by any sign on the door or in the street, but staffed by two or three well-educated seeming Englishwomen, where quality books from the UK and USA (philosophy, history, modern literature etc) in English and in Russian were available for free, believe it or not, so long as the person taking them undertook to take them to the Soviet Union and leave them there as gifts or whatever. This remarkable institution (of which I have seen nothing in the media since) was supposedly funded by "an American millionaire", though the suspicion has to be that it was an unusually (?) clever and oblique operation by the CIA, to subvert the ideological roots of the Soviet state: none of the books were legally available East of the Iron Curtain...makes one think. True, the USSR collapsed mainly because of a lost war (Afghanistan) and economic problems (hm!) but ideological cynicism had sapped its strength, at least in Moscow and Leningrad...
The acting in these episodes is always superb; even the minor roles are played by accomplished players: in the episode about a defecting British businessman and scientist, the Czech secretary is played by an actress who not long after played the disaffected KGB woman officer in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Recommended.
Similar Products
- The Sandbaggers - Series 2
- The Sandbaggers - Series 1 [1978]
- Harry's Game The Complete Series [1983]
- Strangers - The Complete Series 1 [1978]
- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy : Complete BBC Series [1979]
Reviews
The best spy series ever?
Review date: 2007-11-17 Rating: 10 out of 10
The packaging for the Sandbaggers notes that it has been voted the best spy series ever by one of the New York newspapers. And they're probably right. I love Callan too, but the fact that Hunter's department is unacknowledged while cool, seems unlikely, whereas the bureaucracy of Sandbaggers seems very likely and Neil Burnside's onemindedness whilst dealing with superiors more interested in MI6's standing with the government and other agencies strikes a chord.
Roy Marsden's portrayal of Burnside is compelling. He's a highly ethical and driven man who has foregone relationships for the job. Watching him at home eating bacon and eggs with Heinz spaghetti makes him feel very real and a perfect antidote to the high glamour gloss of inferior efforts like Spooks. Ray Lonnen as Willy Caine is a down at heel lothario, but quite charming with it.
Set in the cold war (which undoubtedly was the best period for espionage fiction), the plots are all about political jockeying by the various intelligence agencies, defection, lifting spies from behind the iron curtain, spreading dissension in communist Russia and the like. There are absolutely no attempts to spread viruses, bombs under London or any other sensationalist rubbish. Most of the action takes place with people talking in offices, trying to figure out what the other side is up to.
The third series is, I think, the last one made, as writer and creator Ian Macktinosh suffered an untimely death, so savour the strong characters, the intelligent writing because there ain't no more after this.
Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
Roy Marsden
Ray Lonnen
Alan MacNaughtan
Creators:
Ray Lonnen (Primary Contributor)
Roy Marsden (Primary Contributor)
Recording label: Network
Manufacturer: Network
EAN: 5027626258047
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 2
Format: PAL,
Release date: 2007-01-15
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Audience rating: Parental Guidance
Region code: 2
Running time: 350 minutes
Language: English (Original Language)