Telly Talk: Spy lard

When you’re a ’70s spy, you’re a ’70s spy all the way, from your first cigarette to your last filing cabinet scotch… so it would seem from Legacy, a title that refers not only to the distrust left in the wake of World War II and the rise of the Iron Curtain, but also to the personal legacy left to our young protagonist Charles Thoroughgood by his father’s semi-recent death. Oh, and that thing ‘Operation Legacy’ that comes up too.

This may think it’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy but really it’s just Spooks with a Cold War backdrop. Where are the clouds of smoke, innate and systematic sexism prompting hard as rocks battleaxes, and rubbish technology that dates and heightens the drama? No, this is not the British response to The Americans either.

“They came down with the wall David Hasselhoff was standing on”

It is, however, a fun and enjoyable spy caper, kicking off with an hour and a half episode set in the past and giving us some pseudo baddies to kick nicely against without actually bad-mouthing anyone in the current global power arena. There are no Soviets now. They are gone. Kaput. They came down with the wall David Hasselhoff was standing on.

So, brand new spy, aptly named Thoroughgood – don’t think that escaped me in the ‘neon signposts’ stakes – in 1970s Britain surrounded by blackouts, three-day weeks and union strikes. Yup, more neon signposts. It’s like a fun version of the comprehension sheets we had to do at school in English to show that we’d been paying attention. Things happening in the opaque darkness because the lights have gone out? Huge shadows thrown from candle- and lamp-light blurring figures? Conspiracy theories with the workers? Yes, I think I can identify these metaphors as spy genre. Where do I pick up my gold star?

Despite these almost hilarious clunkers, I never got bored at any point on the hefty 90 minute running time. The dialogue is a bit uneven, starting with a chirpy exchange on espionage training and then letting itself down with the broadly sketched scene with the high end call girl. Seriously, that dress was a cameo in its own right – cut both high and low. You wouldn’t get Billy Piper’s Diary Of A Call Girl in something that revealing and calling it classy, although it was lots of fun. I challenge anyone to remember the actress’s face in the first 10 seconds of that dress’s arrival. Maybe it was a rescue mission for the script in this dip on the part of the wardrobe department. Good to see them pulling together.

I’m having fun pulling Legacy apart, but I had fun watching it too. I’ve carefully given very little of the actual plot away, as it likes twisting and turning in not altogether always obvious ways. It’s no next great master of the television, but it’s entertaining enough, and truly that is its purpose. You can’t really fault something too much when it does exactly what its core raison d’être sets out to do.

So, if you are a part of a demographic that likes spy adventures, reasonably neat conclusions, and heaps of historical cultural inaccuracies – or simply laughing at the above – then Legacy’ll warm your cockles this Thursday. If not, then I’m sure there’s something else on.
Legacy, BBC2, Thursday 28 November 2013

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