Spies of Warsaw
Spies of Warsaw
TV-14 | 09 January 2013 (USA)

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SEASON & EPISODES
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  • Reviews
    Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
    Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
    Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
    Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.
    camarill I enjoyed that TV-movie. The story was no blockbuster/Bond style (though I like that too) but concerned an interesting moment of History. The acting was good (David Tennant of course!) and the characters plausible. It was also a pleasure to watch again Burn Gorman. Most of them when speaking French had an acceptable accent. Another reviewer complained about costumes, but as said in "La Rumba", if they were dressing our (French) soldiers that bad, it was so they would have less regret dying... I don't know Warsaw so I can't judge on the location views; and I'm not a specialist of History and then don't know if there were any goofs. Yet I noted at least two mistakes: (here be small spoilers) when Mercier is phoning from Paris, the phone booth is in rue Moulin, XXIth arrondissement! Must be the Tardis in disguise, and way in the future, as to now, there's never been more than twenty arrondissements... And when the Rozen leave, the plane wears a French flag but RAF cockades (red inside, blue outside).
    Remittance Man I gave it 1 because I couldn't give it 0.Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement may be good writers of comedy series, but the BBC utterly failed when it appointed them to make what turned out to be a very bad adaptation of a very good book.They completely failed to develop the story as it unfolded in the original work by Alan Furst. They failed to develop the original sub-plots that made this story work and added all sorts of unnecessary ones that were not even in the book. Presumably this was done to Make the programme more "exciting". I know adapting books to the screen (big or small) requires changes but I was left wondering whether these two had even read the book before they set to work.Oh, and as for the uniforms. Good in the most, but Tennant's dress uniform in Episode 1 was completely wrong and looked about three sizes too big for him. He ended up looking like an extra from an Italian comic opera. Mercier, the aristocratic cavalry officer, would not have been seen dead in it.All in all wasted opportunity to turn a good book into a good TV series brought down by an obviously small budget, poor direction and poor choice of writers. Gods help us if they ever get turned loose on other works by Furst.
    desertsailor Sorry, lots of whining about how slow the pace of the series is. If you have read the source novels you should know that Alan Furst takes his time. They're all about mood, and ambiguity, shadows, and wheels within wheels. I think the series, while not great, catches, visually, a lot of Furst's writing, and ambiguity. If you are expecting Skyfall, don't bother. If you are willing to let the thing roll at it's own pace, it is well done. My review is generally positive despite BBC America's decision to do the thing in four parts in On Demand, with an endless series of exceptionally low rent commercials that break the mood considerably.
    geoffcoo What a marvellous 2 parter. The acting and settings were very good indeed. The story moved very nicely, building the appropriate tensions throughout. Based on a novel by Alan Furst, of whom I had never heard, it was historically accurate(with the exception of some British beer mugs in Prague). I hope the makers will give us more of the novels in the same format.The first part was sufficient to make me buy the first of the Night Soldiers novels by Alan Furst. Having already read it, I shall now read the rest of the series, in sequence, so a way to go before I reach Spies of Warsaw.
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