Two KGB agents forgot they were Russian and started selling insurance in Surrey. Oops.
Amidst the thaw of glasnost, the Kremlin discovers that two Soviet agents, sent to England under deep cover in 1965, have been “lost.” A beautiful and ambitious Russian agent, sent to London to track them down, becomes embroiled in a tangle of CIA, KGB and MI-5 plots and counterplots as the two lost agents, now utterly assimilated, try to avoid detection.
Acting
Nigel Havers and Warren Clarke's delicious assimilation panic.
Writing
Sardonic dialogue that treats global espionage like office politics.
Production
Glasnost-era tension shot through mundane English drizzle.
Director
Geoffrey Sax
Nigel Havers
Jeremy Coward/Sergei Rublev
Warren Clarke
Albert Robinson/Vladimir Zelenski
Michael Gough
Andrei Zorin
Joanna Kanska
Nina Grishna
David Calder
Victor Chekhov
Annie Hulley
Sandra Robinson
Christopher Rozycki
Oleg Petrovski
Alan David
K1
William Chubb
George Wetherby
Angus MacInnes
Bill Sullivan
Barbara Young
Elsie
Ricco Ross
Karl Richfield
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was a BBC serial before theatrical release; Geoffrey Sax later directed Doctor Who episodes, which explains the tonal whiplash.
Released months before the Soviet Union dissolved, making its 'what if they forgot the Cold War' premise accidentally prophetic.
GB
