The Secret Agent

I had a look over some of the reviews and wondered why they were so hard on this show. After all, it's the type of characters in this show that started The First World War. Few shows actually show us this world. And the characters, given it's such an undeveloped area of period drama, are, for me, hard to beat, bordering on truly original, and brilliantly enacted. The original author is, after all, part of the literary canon for a reason This is comparable to Charles Dickens, but stands on its own merits. The Secret Agent a period piece like nothing I'd encountered before. There are no heroes, only flawed but passionate people, dangerously entwined with the lives of essentially honest people who are, for the most part, unaware of the dangers brewing beneath their floorboards. I really don't know how anyone could have not been totally refreshed by this cinematic experience. Like all good British productions there is a wealth of detail and realism that make this story a true transportation back to the period, with a ripping yarn to keep one glued. And there is a moral here too, relevant to any time.