The Game (UK TV series)

The Game is a British Cold War spy thriller television series that takes place in London in 1972. It was first broadcast on BBC America in 2014. The six-part series was created by Toby Whithouse and written by Whithouse, Sarah Dollard and Debbie O'Malley.^[1][2]

Plot

Joe Lambe (Tom Hughes) is a young MI5 operative in 1970s London. The previous year, Joe had fallen in love with Yulia (Zana Marjanović), one of his Russian contacts and had tried to defect to the Soviet Union to be with her. Instead, Joe was arrested and Yulia was killed by a Soviet agent called Odin. Joe's superior, Daddy (Brian Cox) covers for Joe and insists that the defection was a sanctioned undercover operation gone awry.

MI5 is contacted by Arkady (Marcel Iures), a Soviet agent working undercover in the United Kingdom. He tells them that he has been recruited to take part in "Operation Glass", a secret plan of major importance. He will be used as a go-between to pass messages to other sleeper agents in Britain. Daddy assembles a team to look into Operation Glass, including Joe, the ambitious civil servant Bobby Waterhouse (Paul Ritter), field agent Sarah Montag (Victoria Hamilton), her husband Alan (Jonathan Aris) a sound engineer and Daddy's secretary Wendy (Chloe Pirrie). Joining them is Special Branch detective Jim Fenchurch (Shaun Dooley). As the team investigates Operation Glass, they remain in the dark as to what it is or even whether Arkady is a trustworthy informant or a double agent.

Their early leads seem to confirm the worst, as they discover that a Soviet sleeper agent has been attempting to learn about the letters of last resort, which instruct British nuclear submarines on whether to launch their nuclear missiles, should Britain be victim of a nuclear attack. Later they investigate an MI6 agent, who has been having an affair with an American officer, stationed at a British base housing American nuclear weapons. Plans for a nuclear device are found in the agent's possession and the team believes that the Soviets intend to detonate an American nuclear weapon in Britain, passing it off as an accident. Joe discovers evidence that the agent was framed and the team comes to the conclusion that "Operation Glass" was an elaborate feint by the Russians.

During this time, Joe discovers that the Soviet man who murdered Yulia, is codenamed Odin and works in the West eliminating traitorous agents. Joe actually encounters Odin at one of their early investigations but is unable to capture him. Arkady informs the group that there is a mole in MI5. Afterwards he is murdered by Odin, who inexplicably spares Joe.

As Joe and Fenchurch begin investigating the possibility of a mole, they get a tip from the police about a former army officer, Philip Denmore, who has been enlisting the IRA for help in building a bomb. They send Wendy into his house posing as a nurse to gather information but he eludes them with his home-made bomb. Joe and Fenchurch stake out a location which the Mole had used as a dead drop and are shocked when they discover Alan coming out. Under interrogation, Alan admits to being the mole but nonetheless helps MI5 analyse a phone call to determine Denmore's location. Joe recognizes it as the street outside of the Conservative Party headquarters but arrives too late to prevent the detonation. Later, Sarah is surprised outside her flat by Odin but invites him inside to discuss her role as the mole inside MI5.

Still believing Alan to be the mole, the team digs into his past to discover possible motives and what secrets he may have compromised. Wendy discovers that one contact was a high-ranking Metropolitan Police official, whose name connects to a child who died in infancy and who seems to have no official record prior to joining the force. Suspecting a plant, Bobby orders her to look for other officials who have mysterious gaps in their record, as well as former radicals who inexplicably disappeared. Fenchurch tracks down Colin Blakefield, a smuggler who had put Denmore in contact with the IRA and who also has Soviet contacts. Denmore says that the Soviets had instructed him to prepare a fake passport for one of their agents, Joe Lambe. The authorities try to arrest Joe but he escapes and goes on the run, aided by Sarah, who encourages him to find Odin.

The team discovers an audio tape, where a drunk Russian agent discusses the mole. Every reference to the person's name has been removed, presumably by Alan. When Joe listens to the tape, he discovers that not only the mole's name but also the pronouns referring to them have been removed. He deduces that Sarah is the mole and that Alan had confessed to cover for her. When he confronts Sarah with this, she tells him that Yulia is alive in Soviet custody and that if he wants to see her he should report to a given address. She then goes to see her imprisoned husband, to give him a cover story which he can use, until her compatriots rescue him. Alan uses a threat of suicide to get her to confess to being the mole. Wendy and Bobby reveal to Daddy, that they have discovered a dozen highly placed figures in government who lack any early history and thus are presumably Communist moles.

Daddy realizes that all of the people on the list have significant ties to the Deputy Prime Minister. Operation Glass is still underway, with the coup de grace to be the assassination of the Prime Minister, as he tours the site of the bombing at the Conservative Party offices. In the aftermath of the assassination, heads would roll and all of the Communist moles would move up in the bureaucracy. Joe and Fenchurch manage to prevent the assassination, with Joe rescuing Yulia from Odin who is wounded in the process. As Odin dies, he tells Joe that Yulia had been working for them all along and continues to do so, planting a seed of doubt which poisons their reunion.

Cast

• Tom Hughes as Joe Lambe, an MI5 operative
• Brian Cox as Daddy, the head of MI5
• Paul Ritter as Bobby Waterhouse, the head of counter-espionage
• Shaun Dooley as Jim Fenchurch, a Special Branch detective
• Chloe Pirrie as Wendy Straw, the secretary
• Victoria Hamilton as Sarah Montag, deputy to Waterhouse
• Jonathan Aris as Alan, audio surveillance and Sarah's husband
• Zana Marjanović as Yuli, one of Joe's Russian contacts and his sweetheart
• Judy Parfitt as Hester Waterhouse, Bobby's mother

Production

On 30 November 2012, BBC Cymru Wales, the division of the BBC for Wales, announced the commissioning of the series.^[3][4] The drama was commissioned by Danny Cohen, the controller of BBC One, and Ben Stephenson, the controller of drama commissioning for the BBC.^[1][3] Filming began in Birmingham, London and Wales in August 2013.^[1][5] Birmingham's old library was used for filming, a notable example of Brutalist architecture. Other places which play a role in The Game include Birmingham Moor Street railway station, Cannon Hill Park, the Old Rep, Moseley Road Baths, Merevale Hall, Lickey Hills, the canals in Smethwick, Newhall Street, and the Birmingham old Central Fire Station.^[6][7] The series consist of six episodes, with each episode lasting for sixty minutes.^[3] The executive producers for the series were Faith Penhale, head of drama at BBC Cymru Wales; Hilary Salmon, the senior executive producer for the BBC, and Toby Whithouse.^[1][3] Brian Minchin was originally an executive producer for the series.^[3] The producer was Radford Neville for BBC Cymru Wales.^[1]

Tom Hughes said of the role, "Joe is the type of character that you come across very rarely – on the surface one person, but inside someone entirely different."^[1] Brian Cox, who plays Daddy, said that "the rich character-driven storylines were a real draw and really capture the intense feeling of the cold war period."^[1] The series was showcased by BBC Worldwide in Liverpool in 2014.^[8]

Broadcast

The series premiered on BBC America on November 5, 2014. It started broadcasting in Australia on BBC First on March 23, 2015^[9] and on BBC Two in the UK on April 30, 2015.^[10]

References

External links

• The Game at the Internet Movie Database