Sleepers
(1991/Acorn/BBC)
Picture: C Sound: C+ Extras: C- Episodes: C+
One of
the great jokes of The Cold War has always been the idea of stuffy,
anti-American Soviet spies being sent to the U.S. to penetrate their decadent
culture by living as decadent citizens and enjoying their crazy customs like,
freedom, money, dancing and Rock music.
It made for a great early episode of Mission: Impossible and is the intellectual joke connected to
Geoffrey Sax’s Sleepers, a 1991 BBC
mini-series now on DVD from Acorn.
Two
Soviet KGB agents are still under cover in the U.S. when the U.S.S.R. collapses
and now that they are permanently out in the cold, the CIA, MI-5 and KGB
(before it changed its name) are out to get them. They were sleeper agents, sent in to
assimilate since 1965 until they are activated for a mission. You may have heard of the term associated
with sleeper cells from Islamo-fascists and related terror groups, but this is
more complex because they are white males impersonating other white males and
to the point of language, cultural and detailed nuance imitation. Unfortunately, as it was when the show
debuted on Masterpiece Theater in 1991, the show never works, is all over the
place, and even the likable leads on the run Warren Clarke and Nigel Havers
cannot save this mess.
Split in
four episodes, this mini-series always felt too restricted and rushed. The characters seem too cartoonish and one
reason is that the teleplay by John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch does not
develop any point thoroughly enough to make us suspend disbelief about what is
happening here. Too bad, because the
idea has its possibilities, but hardy any are realized and than makes this a
curio at best for historians.
The 1.33
X 1 image is soft with slight digititis and aliasing troubles throughout,
though color is not awful. The Dolby
Digital 2.0 Stereo is a little better, but shows its age and has no
surrounds. Text cast filmographies are
the only extra, though an essay about the end of The Cold War would not have
hurt.
- Nicholas Sheffo
