Elizabeth I's Secret Agents (TV Mini Series) Episode #1.1 (2017) User Reviews

The Birth of the Secret State

[lavatch · 10/10 · 29 January 2018]

This first-rate program offers a spellbinding introduction to the origins of the secret state and the first national spy network that was created in Elizabethan England.

The focus of the opening episode is on how Elizabeth's powerful minister William Cecil became a master at the manipulation of public opinion and placed sophisticated methods of espionage in the service of the Queen.

The program points out how in 1570, Elizabeth was officially proclaimed a heretic by the Church of Rome, effectively placing a bounty on her head. To keep the Queen alive, Cecil relied on his able spymaster Francis Walsingham to plant agents throughout the country to detect plots against the Queen.

After recounting the outing of the Duke of Norfolk as a traitor, the program addresses the story of Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington conspiracy. The commentators in the program are skillful in getting into the mindset of Cecil (Jeremy Brotton) and that of Elizabeth (Lisa Hilton).

By the end of the episode, it is clear that Cecil and Elizabeth adroitly played off one another to carry out an act of regicide in the beheading of Mary. In the aftermath, Cecil was rid of his greatest obsession, and Elizabeth brilliantly pulled off a spectacular instance of "plausible deniability" for her role in the sordid affair.

In preparation for the next episode, the program paves the way by having Cecil pass the baton to his son Robert, whom he has groomed to succeed him.

A lost opportunity

[stevievinyl · 4/10 · 13 November 2017]

This is a brilliant subject for a dramatised documentary and one which should have been full of dramatic intrigue and historical insight. We do get some good narrative cohesion in some of the dramatised sections of the first episode but the historical commentary provided by the talking heads is so often based on a trite contemporary analogy that we were left with the impression that the way people thought and spoke and acted in the 1570s was pretty much like it is today.

The editing was also very sloppy. At one point, two of the 'experts' speaking one after the other referred to Elizabeth 'prevaricating' when it was clear that they meant she was procrastinating. She wasn't lying: she was slow to act. But if neither of the experts knew the difference between procrastinating and prevaricating what about the producer or any other member of the production team? How did a howler like that end up in the final edited version of a BBC documentary?

Real renaissance history is so much more intense and devious and complex than the simplified pop-culture analogies which punctuated the commentary in this episode. The audience deserved a much richer experience and the BBC should be doing better than this.