Restless (2012 miniseries)

Restless is a 2012 British TV adaptation of the novel Restless by William Boyd. Directed by Edward Hall, it features Hayley Atwell, Rufus Sewell, Michelle Dockery, Michael Gambon and Charlotte Rampling. The two parts first aired on 27 and 28 December 2012 on BBC One.

Plot

Part One

The first episode opens in the 1970s with Ruth Gilmartin, a PhD student at St Johns College Cambridge, driving with her young son to visit her mother in her country cottage. When she arrives her mother, Sally Gilmartin, is nervous and believes that men are watching her from the nearby woods. Ruth mocks her mother's fears. Sally then hands her a notebook with the name "Eva Delectorskaya" on the front, and informs her daughter that this is her real name.

The action then moves to Paris in 1939. Eva, as a young woman, is shown with her brother. The family has recently arrived in Paris from their native Russia. After leaving Eva, her brother is kicked to death in the street by a gang of men. After the funeral, Eva is approached by an Englishman whom she had earlier seen talking to her brother. He introduces himself as Lucas Romer and gives Eva a business card for the company "AAS Ltd".

Later Eva returns to the flat she shares with her father and finds Lucas there. Lucas tells her that he is a British spy and her brother was working for him. He tells Eva that war is imminent and that he wants her to become a spy like her brother. Eva is initially reluctant but then agrees. She is taken to Scotland for training at a country house, where she proves herself extremely capable at memory tests and a survival exercise.

During this period war breaks out. After her training Lucas tells her that they will be working in Belgium. In Ostend Eva is part of a team fabricating fake news stories to be picked up by the Germans. She is then selected to observe an operation in the fictitious Dutch border town of Preslo, the operation goes wrong and results in the death of a Dutch Intelligence Officer and the capture of SIS officers by the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD-Security Service), this was based on the true events of the Venlo Incident.

Cast

• Hayley Atwell as Eva Delectorskaya (younger)
• Kevin Guthrie as Alfie Blytheswood
• Rufus Sewell as Lucas Romer
• Michelle Dockery as Ruth Gilmartin
• Charlotte Rampling as Sally Gilmartin / Eva Delectorskaya (older)
• Michael Gambon as Baron Mansfield
• Michael Peter Willis as Jochen
• Tom Brooke as Angus Woolf
• Adrian Scarborough as Morris Devereux
• Bertie Carvel as Mason Harding
• David Butler as Keegan-Vale
• Julian Firth as Servant
• Catherine Harvey as Mrs. Dangerfield
• James Norton as Kolia
• Thekla Reuten as Sylvia Rhys Meyers
• Rob Ostlere as a shop assistant

Production

The drama was produced by Endor Productions in association with Sundance Channel. It was directed by Edward Hall, and produced by Hilary Bevan Jones and Paul Frift.^[1]

The exterior of the club, "Brydges", frequented by Lord Romer, was filmed at Bearwood College in Berkshire.

The drama was marred by incorrect use of period vehicles. A 1948 right hand drive Triumph Roadster appears in a scene set in the USA in 1941. A street in Washington DC in 1941 is full of British cars - a Series E Morris 8, a 1946 Austin 12 etc. One car appears in Germany near the Belgian border and then the same car appears in London a little later.

Reception

Adrian Michaels, writing for The Daily Telegraph, praised the first part of the adaptation as "terrific", saying: "There was enough plot development to keep everything ticking along, but at an easy pace that was a welcome change from Scandinavian psychopaths starting a bloodbath every 15 minutes."^[2] The first part was also received well by John Crace in The Guardian; he commented on the high production values and compared it another series featuring Dockery, saying it "was everything [Downton Abbey] isn't: well-acted, well-written, well-paced and well-filmed".^[3]

References

External links

• Restless at BBC Programmes
• Restless at the Internet Movie Database