Could you explain to me why you let the most dangerous Soviet penetration agent this country has ever known leg it?
A 2022 British espionage miniseries, made for ITV's revamped online streaming platform ITVX. Based on real events, it's an adaptation of Ben Macintyre's book of the same name about Kim Philby, a senior Secret Intelligence Service officer who was actually a Soviet agent, and the effect his treachery had on his colleagues, who had considered him a close friend. It stars Damian Lewis as SIS officer Nicholas Elliott and Guy Pearce as Philby.
Consisting of six episodes, it has been available to view on ITVX since 8 December 2022 — not long after SAS: Rogue Heroes, another series based on a book by Ben Macintyre, aired on The BBC.
This show provides examples of:
- The Alcoholic: Burgess, with Philby well on the way to joining him after he gets to Moscow. Most of the others are heavy drinkers at least.
- Ambiguous Situation: A few...
- After confronting him in Beirut, did Elliott deliberately let his old friend Philby go, or did Philby manage to get the better of Elliott and escape to Moscow? The show eventually concludes that Elliott, knowing that if Philby were to escape to Moscow it would be the end of his spying career, in addition to which it would likely take years for the KGB to fully trust him, in addition to which taking him back to Britain would, through the likely resulting trial, end up being highly embarrassing for British intelligence and even the Prime Minister himself note , tricked Philby into escaping.
- Who exactly is Elliott's Russian contact in London who the CIA are trying (and failing) to follow?
- Was Sir Roger Hollis — the Real Life head of MI5 from 1956 to 1965 — secretly a Soviet mole? The British government has always claimed that he wasn't, although some commentators and historians have disagreed, occasionally to the point of claiming that he was the Cambridge spy ring's "fifth man" (even though he had actually studied at Oxford). The show's take on this is that Philby told Elliott that Hollis was a mole as a deliberate piece of disinformation, made to look genuine by the fact that he gave Blunt's name as well. Elliott, realising that the mere suspicion of someone as senior as Hollis being a mole will start a witch-hunt that will tear MI5 apart (and also realising that this was probably Philby's intention), neither believes nor reports it. The show's closing captions support the view that, while he came under suspicion, Hollis was not working for Moscow.
- Armour-Piercing Question: Lily Thomas has a good line in these, which is why she's one of MI5's best debriefers. See the quote at the top of the page for an example.
- Bookends: When Lily Thomas goes to SIS HQ to debrief Elliott in the first episode, the door of the office they give her keeps jamming, and she steals the sugar cubes. At the end of the last episode, she returns to SIS HQ having transferred there from MI5; the two things we see of her new office are that the door keeps jamming, and there is a bowl of sugar cubes on the desk.
- Canon Foreigner: Lily Thomas is fictional, the other main characters are not.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: MI5 operative Lily Thomas — a woman from Northern England who's married to a black man — is contrasted with the university-educated, upper-class "chaps" like Elliott who make up the SIS.
- Dirty Communists: It's all about Kim Philby, one of the most notorious Soviet moles in British intelligence who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds (if not thousands) of people. The supporting cast includes three of his fellow-Cambridge spies: Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt. All of them were recruited by Moscow in the 1930s.
- Elvis Impersonator: When the Elliotts go to see Morecambe and Wise at the theatre, one of the sketches (and the only one the viewer sees) is Eric and Ernie's take on this, in which Eric is dressed like Elvis and attempting to sing "Are You Lonesome Tonight", only to get mixed up with the backing vocalists. The full sketch can be seen here
. - Everybody Smokes: As appropriate to the setting. Philby prefers a pipe, with everyone else going for cigarettes — and Philby has to resort to the latter when he can't get decent pipe tobacco in Moscow. This becomes a plot point when the Americans use an empty cigarette packet to pass a message to him.
- Faux Affably Evil: Philby, who has betrayed his country and his friends, causing the deaths of hundreds (possibly thousands) of people in the process.
- Flashback: Most of the story is told in this way. The present consists of Elliott's debriefing by Lily and subsequent actions, and Philby's debriefing by Sergei and his subsequent attempts to adjust to life in Moscow. Everything else — their meeting in Beirut, what they did in World War II, etc — is a series of flashbacks.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Elliott's list of names that he gives to Philby (to see which of them he will name as fellow-moles) consists of Tim Milne, John Cairncross, Anthony Blunt, Guy Liddell, Roger Hollis, Patrick Spence and Mark Sutherland. Of those, Blunt and Cairncross were fellow-moles; Philby names Blunt in addition to Hollis, the head of MI5 who is one of the show's main supporting characters. Of the others, Milne was a childhood friend of Philby's who was later recruited by him into the SIS, while Liddell served in MI5. Patrick Spence, meanwhile, is one of the show's executive producers!
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Philby treats Burgess as this, partly because unlike Maclean, he didn't need to defect in 1951, and by doing so he put Philby himself in jeopardy.
- The Ghost: The actual "fifth man" in the Cambridge spy ring, John Cairncross, is not seen (although his name does come up in conversation).
- Historical Domain Character: It would be easier to list the characters who aren't this. Lily Thomas is the only main character who is fictional.
- Hope Spot: Angleton has one after Philby's defection, as he thinks the latter is still on his side and so can be used as a CIA asset within the KGB. He is disabused of this notion when his agents in Moscow are attacked at their safe house (one of them is killed, the other taken prisoner), Philby having proved his loyalty to the KGB by reporting them after they made contact with him. Subverted in a way, as Philby had hoped to use them to feed false information to the Americans, a plan that's rendered useless by the KGB going in with all guns blazing.
- How We Got Here: After a preamble in which Nicholas Elliott insists that he should go to Beirut to confront Philby, the show starts with Lily Thomas debriefing Elliott after the latter's visit to Beirut, which concluded with Philby escaping to Moscow.
- I Know You Know I Know: At play often, particularly in the scenes in Beirut when it immediately becomes clear to Philby that Elliot knows he's a mole, and knows that he's realised this.
- Imagine Spot: When he and Elizabeth go to the theatre, Elliott imagines Philby on stage singing "Are You Lonesome Tonight".
- Improperly Paranoid: Thanks to his association with Philby, Jim Angelton becomes convinced that the Soviets have penetrated the CIA. The show heavily implies that this was always Philby's intention as far as Angleton was concerned.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Finding out that your best friend is a Soviet mole will invoke this. As will finding out that your best friend has found out that you're a Soviet mole. As will a near-miss from a Luftwaffe bomb on what turns out to be the first night of the Blitz.
- I Take Offence to That Last One: Philby does not like being called a traitor. As far as he's concerned, he's always been a loyal Communist.
- The Mole: Philby. And Burgess and Maclean, prior to their defection. Also, Blunt. Reference is also made to Anatoly Golitsyn, a British mole in the KGB who, although unable to identify Philby by name, provided enough information to the SIS to enable them to determine that Philby was a KGB mole.
- Once More, with Clarity: During a wartime flashback, we see Philby and Elliott's comedy double act, which makes fun of how both Elliott's wife and mother know that he works for the SIS — the former because she worked there as a secretary (which is how they met), the latter because a Cabinet minister told her. Everyone else — work colleagues letting their hair down with a few drinks in a Smoky Gentlemen's Club — seems to find it rather amusing. Later on, a drunk Philby insists on doing it at the dinner party in Beirut, only this time it's rather forced (especially given that Elliott is now fully aware that Philby is a mole, and Philby knows this) and no-one finds it funny.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Used by Elliott to justify why he attended a dinner party hosted by the Philbys while in Beirut, in defiance of protocol; had he not done so, other people (in particular, the Americans) would've known something was up.
- Period Piece: Made in the early 2020s, set in the early 1960s ... with flashbacks going as far back as the mid-1930s.
- Quintessential British Gentleman: Personified by Elliott, and used for maximum cover by Philby.
- Ripped from the Headlines: It's early 1963; as well as the fall-out from Philby's defection, the British government is about to be engulfed by the Profumo scandal. Elliott actually meets Jack Profumo at Buckingham Palace, and hints that he knows what's going on. Later, when Hollis is called out of a meeting to take a call from Downing Street, Elliott surmises that it's to do with Profumo. Mention is also made of the Ashes series going on in Australia note .
- Rule of Pool: After briefly fighting by the swimming pool of a Beirut hotel, Elliott pushes a drunk Philby into it. The following day, Philby can't remember this happening, although he acknowledges that this explains his waterlogged ear.
- Running Gag: Elliott keeps mentioning that Lily is from Newcastle, prompting her to point out that she's actually from Durham.
- Shout-Out: In one of the show's more light-hearted moments, Ian Fleming appears in one of the wartime flashbacks. He's overseeing the testing of a diving suit underneath which an agent is wearing a dinner jacket, thus enabling him to do a Black-Tie Infiltration; this was, of course, done by James Bond in the pre-credits sequence of Goldfinger note .
- More subtly, a casual mention of Jack Profumo talking with Prince Philip at the party at Buckingham Palace could be construed as a nod to The Crown's take on the Profumo scandal (which heavily implied that Prince Philip was somehow involved in it).
- The '60s: The 'present day' scenes are set in London in 1963.
- Smoky Gentlemen's Club: Some scenes — Elliott meets Philby, Elliott dines with Blunt, etc — take place in one of these.
- Sophisticated as Hell: Elliott is fond of telling dirty jokes. He also gets a few F-bombs in, especially during his meeting with Philby in Beirut.
- Spy Fiction: Or rather, a fictionalised re-telling of Real Life spying events. This one is a Layered Drink consisting mostly of Stale Beer, with the Beirut scenes possibly counting as Dirty Martini.
- Spy Speak: Downplayed; there are no code-phrases used, but we do get some examples of spy jargon such as "chicken-feed" (information that, while accurate, is not particularly useful due to it being low grade and/or out of date) — which is used to describe Philby's typed confession by everyone who reads it. This phrase is also used to describe Philby's exposing (to Elliott) of Blunt as a Soviet mole, given that Blunt hasn't been active in the intelligence world since 1945.
- Stiff Upper Lip: Elliott. Also, the waiter at the club who, during an air raid, responds to Philby's request for a drink by asking if he's a member, as only members are allowed to order drinks.
- Upper-Class Twit: Elliott sometimes plays up this role, but his "P. G. Wodehouse act" doesn't fool anyone who knows him.
- Vodka Drunkenski: Having lived in Moscow for over a decade, Guy Burgess has become this.
- We Used to Be Friends: As well as being colleagues in the Secret Intelligence Service, Elliott and Philby were also the best of friends, to the point where Elliott even vouched for Philby after Maclean and Burgess defected in 1951. Then Elliott realises that his friend was playing him all along.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The show ends with a series of captions explaining what eventually happened to Blunt note , Angleton note , Hollis note , Philby note and Elliott note . As well as informing the viewer that ''Lily Thomas never existed".
Boom, ooh, ya-ta-ta-ta,
Boom, ooh, ya-ta-ta-ta,
Are you lonesome tonight...
