Tag: Nick Murphy

Categories A Spy Among Friends Behind the Scenes Print Media

Behind the Scenes of Making ITVX’s A Spy Among Friends

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Blue Chip Drama Makes It Mark

by Staff | Televisual Media | December 9, 2022

A Spy Among Friends is the first original drama to land on new streaming service ITVX. “It’s a spy story, but larger than that, it’s a story about friendship,” says screenwriter Alex Cary.

The idea came in 2018, when Los Angeles-based Cary got a call from author Ben Macintyre’s manager, who played squash at the same LA club. Knowing Cary had worked on US spy thriller Homeland as writer/producer, he suggested Macintyre’s book A Spy Among Friends.

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Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media Review

REVIEW: A Spy Among Friends So Good It Should Be Savoured Not Devoured

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Small Screen Spectacle

by Susan Knox | Irish Mirror | December 8, 2022

ITV kindly launched an adaptation of another Ben MacIntyre book, A Spy Among Friends, the opening episode of which made me want to do exactly what the opening episode of Rogue Heroes made me want to do: Dive in and watch the whole bally thing in one go.

That was a possibility, thanks to it being available on ITV’s new streaming platform ITVX. (No, me neither – but it’s the future, apparently.) However, I decided that the small screen spectacle of Damian Lewis, Guy Pearce and Anna Maxwell Martin at the top of their games should be savoured, not devoured.

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Categories A Spy Among Friends Interviews Podcast

Podcast: Damian Lewis and Alex Cary Talk to Tom Sutcliffe on BBC Sounds

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Political and Personal Betrayal

by BBC Sounds Podcast | BBC | December 8, 2022

The story of double agent and defector Kim Philby has been told many times. A Spy Among Friends, a new six-episode series on ITVX, focuses on Nicholas Elliott, Philby’s lifelong friend. Damian Lewis, who plays Elliott, and writer Alexander Cary talk to Tom Sutcliffe about telling the story of political and personal betrayal anew. Listen to the podcast here, beginning at 11:20.

Source: BBC

Categories A Spy Among Friends Podcast

Podcast: Damian Lewis Chats About His New Thriller on ITVX

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A Spy Among Friends

by Robyn Salt and Chris Lockyer| Sky News/Backstage Podcast | December 8, 2022

Sky News colleague spoke to Damian about one of the reasons he wanted to do A Spy Among Friends.You can listen to the podcast in its entirety here. which begins at 21:20, and Damian’s portion begins around 29:00. Snippet video here.

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Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media

A Spy Among Friends True Story: The Explosive Real Saga of ITVX Drama

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A Basis In Reality

by James Hibbs | Radio Times  | December 8, 2022

With new streaming service ITVX now having launched, TV fans will likely be diving into the platform’s first brand new dramas, including long-awaited Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce spy series A Spy Among Friends.

The show tells the story of a Soviet defector amongst the British intelligence services during the Cold War, with the widespread betrayal hitting particularly intimately for his friend and colleague.

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Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media Review

REVIEW: A Spy Among Friends – A Terrific Espionage Drama

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Emotional Intelligence

by Matthew d’Ancona | Tortois Media  | December 8, 2022

The key text is supplied by aesthete Anthony Blanche in Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. “I took you out to dinner to warn you of charm,” he says to his old Oxford friend, Charles Ryder. “Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, Charles, it has killed you.”

In modern history, rather than fiction, there is no greater example of the lethally corrosive power of charm than Kim Philby: dazzling Cambridge undergraduate; senior MI6 officer tipped to head the intelligence service; our man in Washington, where he formed deep friendships with many in the US intelligence community, notably rising CIA star, James Jesus Angleton; foreign correspondent for the Observer and Economist; and – between his recruitment in Regent’s Park in July 1934 to his death in a Moscow hospital in May 1988 – a ruthlessly devoted servant of the KGB, traitor to his country, and agent on behalf of Soviet communism.

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Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media Video

Damian Lewis Discussed His Double Role on A Spy Among Friends

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“You Pull Up Two Very Different Parts of Your Personality for Those Different Roles”

by Stefania Sarrubba and David Opie | Digital Spy | December 8, 2022

Homeland star Damian Lewis has discussed his double role on ITVX’s new series A Spy Among Friends. An adaptation of Ben Macintyre’s book of the same name, the series follows the real-life story of MI6 spy Nicholas Elliott (Lewis) and his friendship with KGB double agent Kim Philby (Mare of Easttown’s Guy Pearce).

Alongside playing Elliott, Lewis also served as executive producer on the series with his Ginger Biscuit Entertainment. Watch 14-minute video of the discussion here.

“I was in charge of the donuts,” the actor joked with Digital Spy.

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Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media

A Spy Among Friends – From Dead Drops to Laser Spying

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Tradecraft Through the Decades

by Staff | The Independent | December 8, 2022

New ITVX drama A Spy Among Friends explores the incredible story of two real-life MI6 spies – Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis) and Kim Philby (Guy Pearce) – whose decades-long friendship fell apart when Philby was revealed to be a treacherous double agent, spilling secrets to the KGB. Here historian Guy Walters explores the key techniques and kit spies like Elliott and Philby used during the Cold War era – and which ones are still being employed today.

When it comes to tradecraft – the techniques and technologies used in modern espionage – our minds often go straight to the not always entirely accurate (or plausible) rocket-firing cigarettes, grenade-launching pens and lazer-beaming watches from the spy films and shows we grew up on. Yet in real life, though some tradecraft is just as fiendishly clever, impressively high-tech and actually out-there as the gadgets and gizmos dreamed up by Hollywood, other examples represent far simpler, trusted techniques that allow agents to capture and share information efficiently and discreetly, with only a steel nerve and a cool facade required.

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Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media Review

REVIEW: A Spy Among Friends – A New Spin on a Well-Documented Scandal

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“Lewis and Pearce Especially Share Phenomenal Chemistry”

by Chris Connor | Yahoo! Entertainment  | December 8, 2022

A Spy Among Friends, the most high profile launch title for new UK streaming platform ITVX, retells the well-trodden story of the Cambridge Five. The spy ring — comprised of Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross — operated in the UK from the 1930s to the 1950s, and have been well-documented on TV and film, most notably in 2003’s Cambridge Spies, starring Samuel West, Toby Stephens and Tom Hollander.

The latest take on the story takes a different approach to the story, building it around Kim Philby, here played by Memento and LA Confidential star Guy Pearce and his friendship with Damian Lewis’ Nicholas Elliott.

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Categories A Spy Among Friends Print Media Review

REVIEW: A Spy Among Friends – Don’t Take Your Eyes Off This Star-Packed Espionage Thriller

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The Enigma and His Charismatic Traitor

by Rebecca Nicholson | The Guardian  | December 8, 2022

★★★☆☆

The story of the notorious MI6 agent and Soviet spy Kim Philby has been told numerous times before, but A Spy Among Friends (ITVX) has a fresh bash at it, using Ben Macintyre’s book of the same name as its source and inspiration. The stakes are high. This is one of the flagship dramas to launch ITV’s revamped online player and new subscription service. It comes with a starry cast and what should be an irresistible tale of intrigue, double-crossing and suspense, stretched out over multiple locations from Istanbul, Beirut and London to Moscow and Ohio.

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Categories A Spy Among Friends Podcast Video

Guy Pearce Chats About ‘A Spy Among Friends’ on Pilot Podcast

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A Decorated Folder for Kim Philby

by Damianista | damian-lewis.com | December 6, 2022

Guy Pearce was Amon  Warmann’s guest on  Pilot Podcast to chat about A Spy Among Friends, the six-part mini-series arriving on the new streaming  platform  ITVX on  December 8. You can see a glimpse from the podcast in  Amon Warmann’s tweet below and you can listen to the podcast in its entirety here.

Categories A Spy Among Friends Interviews Print Media

Damian Lewis on Being Devoted, Loyal and Blinkered in His Latest Role

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A Beautiful and Sort of Tragic, Sad Relationship

by Rachael Davies | Herald Scotland | December 6, 2022

A Spy Among Friends’ Damian Lewis and Anna Maxwell Martin tell Rachael Davis about the ITVX series’ true story of espionage and betrayal.

It’s 1963: the height of the Cold War. International politics is fueled by secrecy and duplicity, as psychological warfare, propaganda and espionage – not to mention the latent threat of nuclear attack – keeps world leaders looking over their shoulders and into the shadows.

In England, Nicholas Elliott, played by Damian Lewis, is working for MI6 as an intelligence officer. He has a very close, long-standing friendship with Kim Philby, his colleague in intelligence.

Continue reading Damian Lewis on Being Devoted, Loyal and Blinkered in His Latest Role