Product: The Sandbaggers Collection Set 1
Rating: 5.0
The Real Deal In Espionage
"The Sandbaggers", the early 1980s cult hit written by Ian MacKintosh, is to TV espionage shows what Breguet is to watches: fantastically well put together, and intended for the few rather than the many. The charismatic Roy Marsden, who later brought PD James's detective, Adam Dalgliesh, to life, is even more impressive here as Neil Burnside, Director of Operations (D-Ops) of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (or MI-6 as it's known today), during the Cold War years. Burnside's primary function is to lead the "Sandbaggers", a three-man team of operatives trained to deal covertly with delicate international crises that the public might only hear about if the operation goes wrong.The mood created is one of drab offices, endless paperwork, and frustratingly timid, bean-counting bureaucrats, rather than of Aston-Martins, Birettas, and black American Express cards. In the Sandbaggers' world, it is planning, research, and analysis that makes the difference between surviving (or not) an operation, not high-end weaponry.Neil Burnside, caustic, autocratic, and capable of outright cruelty, is nevertheless totally dedicated to the service, to maintaining the primacy of western democracy in a dangerously shifting world, and to the welfare of his team. Divorced and a recovering alcoholic, Burnside lives and breathes his work, and when he loses a Sandbagger to an operation gone wrong, his agony and guilt are intense. Burnside isn't lovable, but as portrayed by Roy Marsden, he is heavily burdened and endlessly fascinating, especially when risking his neck to circumvent questionable decisions by his superiors, who view him as too independent, even if highly efficient.Many Americans will find this series too "talky", but it's precisely its "talkiness" that has the ring of truth about it - most intelligence work IS drudgery and analysis, not high-action car chases. The talk revolves around political issues and covert operations across the globe, and has the feel of an authentic glimpse into the mindset of the Cold War era. The series is not without action: a terrorist hijacking, a dangerous rescue of a wounded American spy as a favor to the CIA, the disastrous capture of the team's only female Sandbagger in East Berlin. . .it's just that these events punctuate rather than fill these wonderfully written shows.Marsden's Burnside leads the show, but the supporting cast of Sandbaggers and bureaucrats, Foreign Office staffers, secretaries, KGB officers, and CIA operatives with whom Burnside maintains a "special relationship", are all terrfic. Getting to know them better and better from one episode to the next, watching Burnside and the Sandbaggers get themselves into and out of tense situations, and most of all enjoying the extremely adult, well-written dialogue, is a tremendous pleasure matched by few television series of my experience.The strange and, to date unsolved, disappearance of Ian MacKintosh, creator of "The Sandbaggers" and himself a former intelligence officer, put paid, as it were, to the series after only three seasons, with about six episodes to each season. I'm thankful to have these on DVD, but how I wish Mr. MacKintosh had stuck around awhile longer and provided us with at least one more season!