So unworthy of our attention are the notorious Soviet spies behind the hit ITV drama that this look at their life even manages to make the ex Tory PM look good. Can we stop this now?
I must confess to a bit of a blind spot when it comes to understanding the apparently enduring – if the appearance of yet another documentary about them in the year of our Lord 2023 is anything to go by – appeal of the Cambridge Four. The great unmasking of Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt as Soviet agents took place largely in the 50s and 60s, and the last of them died in 1988. To those born after the event, it feels like ancient and baffling history, the fundamentals of which are easy to grasp (bunch of pricks get enamoured of communism at university, fail to grow out of it, betray their country but are surrounded by enough similar pricks to escape due censure) and so dispiriting that most of us prefer to turn away and concentrate on the many better things in life instead. But to a certain demographic (the prick-adjacent? The namelessly frustrated who dream of doing something as big, as disruptive as selling big, disruptive secrets to the Russians instead of distributing memes on the internet?) they remain entrancing. Like a Bloomsbury set for centrist dads.
But this demographic is surely ageing. A new audience must be found, the prickish torch passed! And so to The Real Spies Among Friends, an hour-long documentary narrated by who else but that master of prickish characters Roger Allam. It is a companion piece to the drama series A Spy Among Friends, which centres round Guy Pearce as Kim Philby and Damian Lewis as Nicholas Elliott – the former’s best friend who believed in his innocence so deeply that he actually brought him back into MI6 even after it was, uh, pretty clear he helped Maclean and Burgess defect to Moscow just before they were due to be arrested for handing over literal suitcasefuls of top-secret secrets to the Russians since about 1940.
The Real Spies Among Friends aired on ITV1 and is available on ITVX.
