Product: The Sandbaggers Collection Set 1
Rating: 4.0
Better than Tinker Tailor?
There's Shubert's Unfinished Symphony, Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished Last Tycoon, and Eisentein's unfinished Ivan the Terrible trilogy. And now there's the unfinished Sandbaggers. This is really a shame and the reason I give it four stars instead of five. Surely the producers could have figured out how to wrap up the series from notes or pitches from creator Ian Mackintosh, before his untimely disappearance. Maybe with a routine series the producers would be justified in walking away, but The Sandbaggers is such a superior work, that not finishing it seems inexcusable.The series has good production values for late 70s UK television (though I wish they could have found a more exciting remote location than Malta). The video quality holds up quite well on my big-screen -- close-ups are striking.Speaking of close-ups, the faces of the regulars are a delight, from the sardonic Burnside to the priggish Peele to the two steely "Cs" to Sandbagger #1 Willie Cain. A testament to the series quality is that although much of the action takes place indoors and in the same offices, one never feels closed-in, because the drama is in the relationships between the characters. But this doesn't mean soap opera. The issues, though sometimes personal, have to do with the work, and the excitement and the frustrations of the work are splendidly conveyed by superior acting and intelligent dialog.This miniseries begs for repeat viewing, and repeat viewing is our only consolation for the realization that, unless some genius resurrects it, The Sandbaggers will remain an unfinished masterpiece of the spy genre.