usedtobeljs

I have always loved the spymasters, deeply compromised as they always, always are.

I mean, I love spy stories in general, as I wrote about here in this very journal. Both of my longest-running fic series (Investigations and Acquisitions for Giles/Anya and the early-series world of Spooks, the Power stories for Mycroft/Anthea) are in part espionage stories. Masterful Fucked-Up Master Spies! It's one of my things!

So, in the course of my Stephen Dillane spring, I have discovered that Mr. Dillane has played two different spymasters in recent(ish) series. I've tried both of them.

*Alex Rider, a series on Amazon Prime with a third and final season dropping in a week or so -- this trailer for Series One has a few snippets of Dillane as Alan Blunt (the Man in a Three-Piece Suit with a beard and only a few lines), who's supposedly head of a super-secret branch of MI6. He's not the focus of the story in any way, however; the titular character, a teenage wunderkind named Alex Rider who becomes a spy like his (dead) parents and (soon dead) uncle, gets all the screentime. I am too old to enjoy a teen-centered action show.

With that being said, I'll probably watch a few more episodes, with heavy use of the fast-forward option, because Dillane's Alan Blunt is a quintessential spymaster -- well-dressed! sardonic! ruthless! -- albeit with apparently a kinder edge than the Anthony Horowitz source books or the movie version. That is very much my jam.

*Red Election, showing in the US on Hulu, is one ten-episode season: its trailer here sets up the basic story. MI5 (ah, Thames House, albeit with different sets than Spooks), led by spymaster William Ogilvy played by Dillane, gets swept up in a plot connected to Scottish independence. The focus of the v. LeCarre-styled action is Ogilvy's MI5-agent daughter Beatrice, played by Lydia Leonard, and her Danish-agent counterpart, with assistance from Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as another MI5 lead agent; the Prime Minister in the show is played by v. cute James D'Arcy, btw.

I am fairly sure that Dillane's character is going to turn out to be a baddie, but I don't care (much). In all the Thames House scenes, he is v much a Grey Man, in grey suits and oversized glasses, the lighting making him look his age whilst he is nevertheless ruthless as fuck. However, this greyness is a disguise for who he really is (except he's still ruthless as fuck). In Episode One, for instance, there's a sequence where his daughter comes to his house for dinner, which he's cooking; here, in softer, more golden light, he looks ten years younger, and he's wearing a soft black button-down shirt and black jeans, which readers of I&A might remember was always Giles's spy-gear. There's a shot in this scene sequence where he leans back in his chair, firelight aglow all around him and glinting off the glasses he has pushed to the top of his head, and when I saw it I literally made a noise that alarmed Miss Adventure. THIS IS MY JAM. (Second episode, he wears a tux. Come on! I am only human!)

So that's my spring with the spymasters so far. ;)

(I am still watching The Tunnel, too, although the end of Series One all but broke me. Stop torturing Karl, show!)

Wishing you an April filled with things you love!