Philly.Com Preview Spies Of Warsaw - On BBC America From Wednesday



Philadelphia news and lifestyle website have previewed the first episode of Spies Of Warsaw, the pre-war espionage series starring David Tennant and Janet Montgomery. The miniseries premieres on Dramaville on BBC America on Wednesday 3rd April at 9pm/8c


Philly.com say


Warsaw in 1937 was a city full of intrigue. A city crawling with spies.

A city on the brink of war.

Its story is told in BBC America's superb, gorgeously shot mini-series Spies of Warsaw, which premieres Wednesday.

Spies of Warsaw is a lush, classic spy yarn starring David Tennant (Doctor Who, Hamlet) as Col. Jean-Francois Mercier, a dashing French World War I hero-turned-spy who is convinced that a German invasion is imminent, but is ignored by his superiors.

Adapted from Alan Furst's acclaimed 2008 novel, the mini-series will be shown in two 90-minute parts on successive Wednesdays.

It's September 1937, and the French Embassy in Warsaw has a new addition to its staff: Military attache Col. Mercier, a war hero with more medals on his chest - and more bayonet, bullet, and shrapnel scars on his body - than one could count.

His cover job is to sell French armaments to an impoverished Poland and to assure the Poles that the French will come to their rescue in case of German aggression. He attends countless dinners, dances, and cocktail parties, doing the embassy circuit around town.

In reality, he's a covert operative sent by France's spy organization, Deuxième Bureau, to divine the strength and positions of the Nazi war machine.

Tennant is brilliant as Mercier, a true hero who doesn't believe for a moment he's a hero. A brooding pessimist who passionately believes in hope. He's appropriately bored yet charming at parties. On moonless nights he crosses into Germany, or gathers intel from his Polish and German agents.

Polish star Marcin Dorocinski plays Mercier's only close friend, Polish intelligence agent Antoni Pakulski. They fought together in 1920 in the Polish-Russian war, and now commiserate with each other about the good old days when war was face-to-face and not covert, a matter of the shadows.

And Janet Montgomery plays Anna Skarbek, a Polish-French lawyer whose charm proves more dangerous than any German offensive.

Spies of Warsaw is a deeply romantic, intricately plotted, and well-structured character study. But it doesn't romanticize espionage or revel in violence. It shows it as a dangerous, often ugly, if necessary, business.



Source: Philly.com


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