Page Eight

David Hare wrote and directed this spy film for the BBC, his first work as a director since Strapless in 1989. Bill Nighy plays Johnny Worricker, a long-serving MI5 officer who is calm, ironic and tired. A report reaches him showing that the prime minister knew something and withheld it, and Worricker has to decide what to do with it. The film keeps action entirely at bay. Espionage here is not surveillance and weapons but the question of who said what to whom in an office, which sentence was minuted, and which friendship was in fact a calculation. Hare's theatre background is visible in every scene, and the tension is produced wholly through dialogue. The cast is unreasonably strong: Rachel Weisz, Michael Gambon, Ralph Fiennes, Judy Davis and Tom Hughes. It aired on BBC Two on 28 August 2011. Two sequels followed in 2014, Turks and Caicos and Salting the Battlefield, and the three together are known as the Worricker trilogy. Who it is for: viewers who enjoy British political thrillers and espionage driven by conversation. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace, action or genre suspense.