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By
FRANK BEHRENS
This BBC miniseries is a
docudrama, which means you never know what is fact
and what was made up for "dramatic" purposes. It
is about the four gentlemen who hobnobbed at
Cambridge University in the 1930s and decided that
the only way to fight Hitler was to embrace
Stalin: Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby,
and Donald Maclean.
Several plays have been written about them, as a
group and singly, in the past, but this is a
240-minute affair and is available on a two DVD
set. The first disc holds the first three
episodes, the second holds the fourth and a good
deal of very interesting bonus material. I found
the latter to be far more enthralling than the
drama itself.
Although the acting is excellent, following each
of the men and trying to understand certain
motivations and plot twists became a bit tedious.
Add to that the facts that none of them are
particularly sympathetic and that the inevitable
sex scenes (alternating between hetero- and
homosexual couples) seemed spliced in because
nothing can appear on the screen without them
nowadays, and we have a fairly disappointing
product. If you do watch it, please see if you
agree with me that things do not really get moving
until the end of the first half hour of the third
episode.
Kudos, however, to the acting of the four leads:
Toby Stephens (Philby), Samuel West (Blunt), Tom
Hollander (Burgess), and Rupert Penry-Jones
(Maclean).
On the other hand, I have a feeling that I would
have been more impressed had I previously seen the
History Channel 45-minute episode called "Spy Web:
the Cambridge Spies" offered as a bonus on the
second disc. Here it tells the story clearly,
concisely, and without stag-film additions; and
perhaps viewing this first will make the 4-hour
version more palatable. You can elect to run the
first and last episodes again with a commentary
superimposed, and that might help also.
There are also five historical TV broadcasts and
news reports concerning the four men, the most
ironic of which is a 1965 tour of the art gallery
in Buckingham Palace, hosted by Blunt himself. |
