Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media

I, Spy

Are You Lonesome Tonight?

by Peter Craven | The Spectator | January 5, 2023

Just now you can see Pearce in A Spy Among Friends as Kim Philby, that dazzling double agent.

The streamer goes for six episodes and if you’re quick and lethal you can join BritBox for a free trial period and watch this extraordinary story of how Damian Lewis as Nicholas Elliott, the patriotic mate, tangles with the problem of Philby two-timing for the Russians.

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Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media

What an MI6 Spy Told Me Over Lunch

He Gave Me The Slip

by William Keegan | The Guardian | December 31, 2022

The English of a certain generation seem to be divided between those who are fascinated by the Cambridge spies and those who are not. For the former, the fascination and in my case memories have been rekindled by the recent release of the television series A Spy Among Friends, starring Guy Pearce as the treacherous Kim Philby and Damian Lewis as Nicholas Elliott, his close friend for many years at the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6.

The bond between Philby and Elliott was tested when the latter discovered that he had unwittingly been one of Philby’s prime sources for top-secret intelligence as part of the notorious Cambridge spy ring who passed information to the Soviet Union during the second world war and, later, the cold war. This was all the more galling for Elliott, who had helped to clear Philby’s name when he had come under suspicion some years before his ultimate confession in Beirut in 1963.

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Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media

A Double Agent, a Lifelong Friend and a Personal Betrayal: A Spy Among Friends

Now Streaming In UAE on TOD

by Enid Grace Parker | The Khaleej Times | December 15, 2022

Wondering what to binge-watch this weekend? Why not check out the 6-part series A Spy Among Friends, an intriguing tale of espionage, friendship, and betrayal that dramatizes the true story of Britain’s most notorious double agent and defector, Kim Philby. Philby is played by Australian actor Guy Pearce (Neighbours, Memento) while Homeland star Damian Lewis takes on the role of his lifelong friend, MI6 agent Nicholas Elliott. Based on the New York Times best-selling book by Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends chronicles Philby’s deeply personal betrayal, uncovered at the height of the Cold War, which resulted in the gutting of British and American Intelligence.

Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actor Lewis – who received a CBE from Britain’s King Charles on December 14 – told City Times in a recent virtual group interview that roles based on real life are “more challenging” but “always more interesting” to him.

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Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media Review

A Spy Among Friends Dramatizes The Treachery of Kim Philby

“All the Thrills, Intrigue and Skulduggery of its Source Material”

by Staff | The Economist | December 14, 2022

“If i had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friends,” E.M. Forster wrote in 1938, “I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” The English author’s words are used as an epigraph to “A Spy Among Friends”, Ben Macintyre’s bestselling book of 2014 about Harold “Kim” Philby, as well as for a new television adaptation. Yet the British intelligence officer and double-agent made no such choice: he betrayed his country, his friends and his family for decades and without remorse.

Philby’s name is synonymous with treachery on a colossal scale. Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess, John Cairncross and Donald Maclean—the other members of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring—committed many duplicitous deeds for their Soviet masters, but none can claim the title of Britain’s most notorious spy. Philby played his high-stakes game of double-cross so ruthlessly, so successfully and for so long that he acquired a different level of infamy after he was unmasked.

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Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media Video

VIDEO: Nick Murphy Explains Why A Spy Among Friends Deliberately Jumps Around

“The Jump-Around Is Part Of The Point”

by Brenna Cooper and David Opie | Digital Spy | December 12, 2022

A Spy Among Friends director Nick Murphy has has explained his reason for the show’s confusing narrative, saying it was a deliberate choice to “discombobulate” viewers. Throughout the series, the show jumps between several locations across 30 years as it tells the story of Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis) and KGB double agent Kim Philby (Guy Pearce). Murphy explained that it was a conscious decision from the beginning not to explicitly label each location and year, in order to focus on the show’s emotional storyline.

“The show jumps around over 30 years in London, Berlin, Moscow, Vienna, Istanbul… We made a decision quite early to not caption things as we jump around, because it would become this endless litany of captions on screen,” he told Digital Spy in a video here.

Continue reading VIDEO: Nick Murphy Explains Why A Spy Among Friends Deliberately Jumps Around

Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media Video

VIDEO: Damian Lewis and Alex Cary Discuss A Spy Among Friends’ Saddest Scene

It Is Even More Heartbreaking Than You Think

by Jacob Sarkisian and David Opie | Digital Spy | December 11, 2022

A Spy Among Friends‘ first episode ends with a heartbreaking scene, but the makers of the show have explained the personal connection that makes it sadder than you think.

In the scene, Damian Lewis’ character watches Guy Pearce’s character on stage. As he watches, he starts to cry. However, Pearce’s character isn’t actually there and it’s all in the mind of Lewis’ character. Watch video here.

Continue reading VIDEO: Damian Lewis and Alex Cary Discuss A Spy Among Friends’ Saddest Scene

Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media Review

REVIEW: TV – A Spy Among Friends

Superb Cast and Top Drawer Script

by Alison Rowat | Herald Scotland | December 10, 2022

When the TV adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy appeared in 1979 it was judged unsurpassable in its field. Alec Guinness as George Smiley? Only a fool would try to match that.

Then came the 2011 film with Gary Oldman, and spy tale traditionalists wobbled. Ditto BBC1’s The Night Manager five years later, with Tom Hiddleston’s BTM as its USP. I hear good things about Slow Horses (Disney+), which I’m saving till the sad day I finish the novels.

In short, the competition in spy dramas is intense. Given this, ITVX, the new streaming service that replaces ITV Hub, was taking a chance having A Spy Among Friends as its curtain raiser. From a minute in, however, it was clear everything was going to be all right on the opening night.

Set in the world of posh chaps who swear in a devilishly attractive fashion, A Spy Among Friends starred Damian Lewis as Nicholas Elliott, sent to Beirut to sort out the problem of his old pal and fellow MI6 agent Kim Philby (Guy Pearce). When Philby defected to Russia there were questions to be answered back in London, and MI5’s Lily Thomas (Anna Maxwell Martin) was the steely Durham rose doing the asking.

The cast was superb and the script by Alexander Cary (Homeland) from the book by Ben Macintyre, top drawer. “I’m not a traitor,” said an affronted Philby to his Russian handler. “I’ve been loyal to Marxism and to the Soviet Union my entire adult life.” It was the movie quality production, though, that lingered longest. From post-war Beirut to grim old London, you could almost smell the money spent.

Read the rest of the original article at The Herald Scotland

Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media Review

REVIEW: Stunning Spy Thrillers on the Streaming Services

Brilliantly Constructed

by David Pollock | The Courier | December 10, 2022

Christmas has come early for fans of high-quality British spy thrillers, with two excellent and very different espionage series now up on streaming television.

The new kid on the block is the one with the classic feel, a six-part adaptation of Ben Macintyre’s 2014 book A Spy Among Friends (ITVX). Macintyre’s work has been a telly flavour of this year, with the recent BBC hit SAS Rogue Heroes also adapted from one of his works.

The Kim Philby Affair
The original A Spy Among Friends was subtitled ‘Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal’, and it told the story – or rather, the network of stories and characters – behind the 1963 defection of high-ranking Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, now MI6) agent and Soviet spy Philby to Russia.

Adapted by writer Alex Cary and starring Guy Pearce as Philby and Damian Lewis as his friend and colleague Nicholas Elliott, the show is an account of the saga which begins in the aftermath of the spy’s flight to Moscow from Beirut.

Elliott is under suspicion as an accomplice, as he was the last British agent to debrief Philby over several days in a bugged Beirut apartment.

The first episode is slow but brilliantly constructed, one of those thrillers that’s so pitch-perfect in its writing that much of the tension comes in waiting for each new line of crisply-delivered dialogue. Conversations are conducted like swordfights, rather than exercises in simply filling the plotting gaps.

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Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media Video

VIDEO: Nick Murphy and Anna Maxwell Martin Delve Into Intense Interrogation Scenes With Damian Lewis

Meeting of the Minds

by Sabrina Barr | The Metro | December 10, 2022

In the newly-released ITVX drama, Lewis stars as Nicholas Elliott, a MI6 agent who was duped for years by his friend and close colleague, Kim Philby (Guy Pearce). It turns out that during the Second World War and early years of the Cold War, Philby was feeding secrets back to the Soviet Union, having been working as a double agent – the most notorious in British history, in fact.

Line of Duty star Maxwell Martin plays Lily Thomas, the only fictional character in the story, who works at MI5 and is brought in to ascertain whether Elliott had some involvement in Philby’s deception and eventual fleeing, as he went on to defect to Moscow in 1963. Watch video below:

Continue reading VIDEO: Nick Murphy and Anna Maxwell Martin Delve Into Intense Interrogation Scenes With Damian Lewis

Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media Review

REVIEW: A Spy Among Friends-M16 Poshos and the Club That is Britain’s Old Elite

Posh Omerta

by Hugo Rifkind | The Times | December 9, 2022

Posh omerta. Let’s talk about that. It’s at the heart, pretty much, of A Spy Among Friends, a tremendous new espionage thriller on ITVX. And no, I’m not wholly clear what ITVX is either, but let’s move on.

An adaptation — like so many things these days — of a book by my colleague Ben Macintyre, it stars Guy Pearce as the treacherous MI6 spy Kim Philby and Damian Lewis as Nicholas Elliott, a friend and fellow spy who was the first to confront him. We have Anna Maxwell Martin as the fictional MI5 agent Lily Thomas, and Karel Roden as a Soviet handler known only as Sergei. At first, at least, it is basically three circling, interlocking conversations. Elliott questions Philby in Beirut before Thomas questions Elliot in the UK and Sergei debriefs Philby in the USSR.

Continue reading REVIEW: A Spy Among Friends-M16 Poshos and the Club That is Britain’s Old Elite

Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media Video

VIDEO: Damian Lewis and Alex Cary Introduce A Spy Among Friends

No One’s Heard of Nicholas Elliott

by Sabrina Barr | Yahoo! UK News | December 9, 2022

Host Johnny has Zoom interview with Damian and Alex Cary to discuss bringing to life ITVX’s new thriller A Spy Among Friends. Johnny first compliments Band of Brothers as the best historical series ever made for television and thanks Damian for being a part of something so meaningful in his own personal life. When discussing Spy and how well-known the story and particularly Philby is, Damian shares,

“We worried, we have worried at times you know, [that] Kim Philby is so well known as part of the Cambridge Spy Ring of the 30’s, but I think that’s probably true of an older generation, that’s right, and I think anyone that we hope will sit down to watch this, which is from 15-year-olds to 75-year-olds, but from the 15 to 40-year-old crowd, I think you’re right. I think a lot of people won’t know much about him. What appealed to us, at least to me, was that Nicholas Elliott, his best friend, is even less well- known. No one’s heard of him.”

Watch video at the source here.

Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media Video

VIDEO: Alex Cary Discusses Difference Between A Spy Among Friends and Homeland

Comparing the Spy Thrillers

by Sabrina Barr | The Metro | December 9, 2022

A Spy Among Friends writer Alex Cary has opened up about how the espionage drama differs from Homeland, having previously worked with Damian Lewis on the American spy thriller.

The new series, released on streaming platform ITVX and based on the book of the same name by Ben Macintyre, tells the true story of double agent Kim Philby, played by Guy Pearce, who was discovered to have been feeding secrets back to the Soviet Union throughout his several years enlisted by MI6. Watch video below:

Continue reading VIDEO: Alex Cary Discusses Difference Between A Spy Among Friends and Homeland