Frustrating TV show! It's a true story about maybe the worst mole in US history. It's obviously made for guys who like the Cold War, spying, reading about KGB and USSR and CIA and FBI. It's right up my alley. Plus the Ames movie was really cool, but unfortunately too short and shallow so it really made me interested in watching this way more expensive and longer TV show version. I saw that the reviewers were split on this show. When it aired it was a giant disaster. No one watched it. Viewers hated it so much that they didn't even air all episodes. And it's very clear why this happened. The show has a ton of glaring errors that just hit you in the stomach again and again.
The acting is unacceptable. You know those cheap 40 min doc TV show episodes about some disaster where they hire random people who look like the person to play the role? They go out into the desert, or into a mock airplane and then film some scenes in a day. The person will just speak his lines without preparation and the doc will try to cut most of it out or put narration over it. Yeah, this mini series has worse acting still. Some of the acting is horrible. Ames is inexcusable bad acting. It's a lead role! The guy looks like him and acts creepy enough. But all his lines are delivered with a slimy slow cadence. It's extremely bad. There is even a scene where he buys a house with his wife and he spins around with his arms in the air and shouts "We bought a house." Why are they forcing us to watch this? The Russian actors are 80% non-Russians. So British people learning Russian lines. And it's extra weird as a few Russian speaking actors, especially the kids, are native speakers. It creates a ton of scenes where one small part actor is fluent and the big shot actor is stumbling over his Russian words. And why are they not always speaking Russian? The show tries to make the Russians speak English most of the time. But it's not consistent. So you may have a scene where a character speaks Russian to one character then out of nowhere speaks English to another character. Are they actually speaking Russian in the scene? I just don't know. At least I know Ames spoke Russian in real life so when he interviews a Russian deserter I assume they are speaking Russian? Nothing hints at this whatsoever though.
The directing is god awful. Inexcusable. Some sets must have taken ages to recreate. You have perfectly replicated apartments or offices from 1985. Old cars, proper buildings. Then you have actors walking in stumbling over their lines and not knowing what to say when. So how come you spend a ton of money on sets and even clothes and don't ask the actors to rehearse their lines at home? It's a colossal waste of resources.
The editing is some of the worst I have ever seen. It's frankly a simple show to edit. Most scenes are set inside the CIA offices. And all sets are set up carefully. So you have scenes carefully recreated. And you have A TON of info about everything. Even full interviews that took place. All episodes last 40 minutes. So you basically can open an old notebook and let the actors act out an interview. Instead most scenes are fake generic recreations. In interview scenes you will have generic questions. Not CIA stuff, just movie dialogue to waste our time. And the editors are frantically trying to make it work somehow. In one episode where Ames interviews a high ranking Russian deserter they have Ames constantly ask one question "who is the mole?" and the deserter is constantly asking for a cup of tea. That's it. They just repeat this for over 5 minutes. They didn't try to act out a real CIA interrogation. The editors had nothing to work with. The episode runtime has to be filled out and there is no proper dialogue or real CIA work. So they are trying to edit in tension and excitement. Something clearly not in the scene where the same question is repeated again and again. Hence you get bad acting, bad dialogue, and then editing trying to fake drama out of nothing which makes it 10 times worse. Same thing happens in scenes where parents meet their kids. The kids are just saying genetic stuff like "I love you" and the editors try to make it last 3 minutes to fill up the runtime. At least they could have made the kids talk about 80's stuff or play with 80's toys. Or they could discuss current day news. They gave the editors nothing to work with. The director likely just told the actors to act out some "dad and daughter scene" they did that for 5 minutes. The director yells cut. They give it to the editor and ask the editor to cut it down to 3 minutes. Where is the script? You constantly feel like a TV show based on a full book could have spent the time presenting more info instead of using filler scenes. Episode 1 is nice, then it becomes obvious they are making filler episodes. Then the last 2 episodes are proper again. Maybe the studio told them to create 8 episodes instead of 6 and they had to add in a ton of filler acting scenes to make it stretch. They also have a ton of flashbacks. Every third scene is a flashback so we never quite understand what happened when. They don't age the actors. So you may have a scene then a flashback scene 10 years in the past with the same actors looking exactly the same. Confusion.
The plot. It's a show about a real investigation. A mini team was set to find Ames. Now, these agencies don't really want to find moles. Finding a mole just makes them look worse and on the positive side you get... not much really. You are bascially proving yourself incompetent and not worth the state budget. MI6 and CIA rather hide the moles away. Kim Philby was basically told to flee to USSR when he was found out. MI6 didn't want him captured as it would mean negative media attention. The biggest mole in UK history just escaped and started working for KGB becoming their most knowledgeable spy and an expert on the West. Basically giving KGB a perfect image of how CIA, FBI, and MI6 worked. They didn't take full advantage of that of course as he was Western and they hated Westerners. Anyhow, it was a small CIA team and the book is written by 2 women on the team. And one died before the TV show was made the other was alive to likely guide the TV show into making her look like a Mary Sue. Jodie Whittaker, a British actress, tries her best to fake an American accent as Sandy Grimes. It's never good. But it's acceptable. She's young, attractive. The real life Grimes looked 30 years older. Which also makes you wonder how she can look 25, but have a teen daughter. And in flashback scenes 10 years in the past she looks exactly the same. At least they could have changed hair color. Jeanne Vertefeuille here looks 20 years younger. And she has black hair in all scenes while she had grey hair in real life. You have a perfect way to age her properly by giving her a grey wig in later scenes. Keep in mind the show itself starts in 1985 when Ames started spying for KGB. So from 1985 to 1994 when he was arrested and the actors still look as young as the did at the start. Even the males are way too young here. And none are aged. You have flashbacks in 1975, and a scene set in 2012. In 1985 the real life people looked way older than the actors in 2012... fishy.
So you have a hot blonde running around doing everything. She's the one who wrote the book and can guide the producers. In the show she's doing 90% of the work investigating Ames. A Mary Sue character. We even see her get up early to cook breakfast for her whole family. And she had a bunch of ideas that all turned out to be perfect guesses for what KGB did, what happened to some person, or what a clue meant. Constantly seeing everything while everyone else is doubting her or doing nothing. Her boss initially lets her follow all her assumptions and she's right all the time. Scarily so. Then out of nowhere he tells her she can't follow a new assumption. So yeah, she's infallible yet is told to stop. Why? Later in the show Jeanne Vertefeuille, the other book author, gets a positive arc too. Just a small role though. All CIA agents are nice people except for Ames who is over the top creepy and doesn't fit in. The only CIA agent who looks off.
Why the Mary Sue though? I assume they are too afraid to make women look weak or fallible? Real CIA work is done in groups with a ton of bad guesses. She makes 1 single mistake. She forgets to lock the door and Ames walks into the room and reads everything acting super creepy. She later guesses he's the mole and has to convince everyone. She slowly convinces everyone one at a time which is actually super fun to watch in the last 2 episodes. But then a Russian KGB agent reveals that Ames is the mole. So practically they didn't need to do anything to find the mole. As soon as the Russian agent tells them about Ames and gives them concrete evidence they can start recording and following Ames. Before that they couldn't. Without their investigation Ames' arrest would have happened in the same year anyhow. This is how is works 95% of the time in the real world. You don't have agencies finding their own spies. Even in this show at one point the investigation team is shut down and the CIA leaders explain that they don't want to find the mole as it's not good for them. The Mary Sue character is a superhero who in the show cannot get actual results as it would be ahistorical.
Overall it was a good enough watch. I had to look away in the cringe parts. About 4 episodes are filler. But real history and spy work is fascinating enough to engage me. An editor reediting this show for fun could make it really fun! There is enough here to make a good show by removing 30% of it. Not even just scenes. Often the regular daily life stuff just continues for way too long. The camera lingers 3 seconds too long on characters to fill up the runtime making dialogue cringe. Reediting the Ames lines to make it flow would save the show. But who will do the editing?
The acting is unacceptable. You know those cheap 40 min doc TV show episodes about some disaster where they hire random people who look like the person to play the role? They go out into the desert, or into a mock airplane and then film some scenes in a day. The person will just speak his lines without preparation and the doc will try to cut most of it out or put narration over it. Yeah, this mini series has worse acting still. Some of the acting is horrible. Ames is inexcusable bad acting. It's a lead role! The guy looks like him and acts creepy enough. But all his lines are delivered with a slimy slow cadence. It's extremely bad. There is even a scene where he buys a house with his wife and he spins around with his arms in the air and shouts "We bought a house." Why are they forcing us to watch this? The Russian actors are 80% non-Russians. So British people learning Russian lines. And it's extra weird as a few Russian speaking actors, especially the kids, are native speakers. It creates a ton of scenes where one small part actor is fluent and the big shot actor is stumbling over his Russian words. And why are they not always speaking Russian? The show tries to make the Russians speak English most of the time. But it's not consistent. So you may have a scene where a character speaks Russian to one character then out of nowhere speaks English to another character. Are they actually speaking Russian in the scene? I just don't know. At least I know Ames spoke Russian in real life so when he interviews a Russian deserter I assume they are speaking Russian? Nothing hints at this whatsoever though.
The directing is god awful. Inexcusable. Some sets must have taken ages to recreate. You have perfectly replicated apartments or offices from 1985. Old cars, proper buildings. Then you have actors walking in stumbling over their lines and not knowing what to say when. So how come you spend a ton of money on sets and even clothes and don't ask the actors to rehearse their lines at home? It's a colossal waste of resources.
The editing is some of the worst I have ever seen. It's frankly a simple show to edit. Most scenes are set inside the CIA offices. And all sets are set up carefully. So you have scenes carefully recreated. And you have A TON of info about everything. Even full interviews that took place. All episodes last 40 minutes. So you basically can open an old notebook and let the actors act out an interview. Instead most scenes are fake generic recreations. In interview scenes you will have generic questions. Not CIA stuff, just movie dialogue to waste our time. And the editors are frantically trying to make it work somehow. In one episode where Ames interviews a high ranking Russian deserter they have Ames constantly ask one question "who is the mole?" and the deserter is constantly asking for a cup of tea. That's it. They just repeat this for over 5 minutes. They didn't try to act out a real CIA interrogation. The editors had nothing to work with. The episode runtime has to be filled out and there is no proper dialogue or real CIA work. So they are trying to edit in tension and excitement. Something clearly not in the scene where the same question is repeated again and again. Hence you get bad acting, bad dialogue, and then editing trying to fake drama out of nothing which makes it 10 times worse. Same thing happens in scenes where parents meet their kids. The kids are just saying genetic stuff like "I love you" and the editors try to make it last 3 minutes to fill up the runtime. At least they could have made the kids talk about 80's stuff or play with 80's toys. Or they could discuss current day news. They gave the editors nothing to work with. The director likely just told the actors to act out some "dad and daughter scene" they did that for 5 minutes. The director yells cut. They give it to the editor and ask the editor to cut it down to 3 minutes. Where is the script? You constantly feel like a TV show based on a full book could have spent the time presenting more info instead of using filler scenes. Episode 1 is nice, then it becomes obvious they are making filler episodes. Then the last 2 episodes are proper again. Maybe the studio told them to create 8 episodes instead of 6 and they had to add in a ton of filler acting scenes to make it stretch. They also have a ton of flashbacks. Every third scene is a flashback so we never quite understand what happened when. They don't age the actors. So you may have a scene then a flashback scene 10 years in the past with the same actors looking exactly the same. Confusion.
The plot. It's a show about a real investigation. A mini team was set to find Ames. Now, these agencies don't really want to find moles. Finding a mole just makes them look worse and on the positive side you get... not much really. You are bascially proving yourself incompetent and not worth the state budget. MI6 and CIA rather hide the moles away. Kim Philby was basically told to flee to USSR when he was found out. MI6 didn't want him captured as it would mean negative media attention. The biggest mole in UK history just escaped and started working for KGB becoming their most knowledgeable spy and an expert on the West. Basically giving KGB a perfect image of how CIA, FBI, and MI6 worked. They didn't take full advantage of that of course as he was Western and they hated Westerners. Anyhow, it was a small CIA team and the book is written by 2 women on the team. And one died before the TV show was made the other was alive to likely guide the TV show into making her look like a Mary Sue. Jodie Whittaker, a British actress, tries her best to fake an American accent as Sandy Grimes. It's never good. But it's acceptable. She's young, attractive. The real life Grimes looked 30 years older. Which also makes you wonder how she can look 25, but have a teen daughter. And in flashback scenes 10 years in the past she looks exactly the same. At least they could have changed hair color. Jeanne Vertefeuille here looks 20 years younger. And she has black hair in all scenes while she had grey hair in real life. You have a perfect way to age her properly by giving her a grey wig in later scenes. Keep in mind the show itself starts in 1985 when Ames started spying for KGB. So from 1985 to 1994 when he was arrested and the actors still look as young as the did at the start. Even the males are way too young here. And none are aged. You have flashbacks in 1975, and a scene set in 2012. In 1985 the real life people looked way older than the actors in 2012... fishy.
So you have a hot blonde running around doing everything. She's the one who wrote the book and can guide the producers. In the show she's doing 90% of the work investigating Ames. A Mary Sue character. We even see her get up early to cook breakfast for her whole family. And she had a bunch of ideas that all turned out to be perfect guesses for what KGB did, what happened to some person, or what a clue meant. Constantly seeing everything while everyone else is doubting her or doing nothing. Her boss initially lets her follow all her assumptions and she's right all the time. Scarily so. Then out of nowhere he tells her she can't follow a new assumption. So yeah, she's infallible yet is told to stop. Why? Later in the show Jeanne Vertefeuille, the other book author, gets a positive arc too. Just a small role though. All CIA agents are nice people except for Ames who is over the top creepy and doesn't fit in. The only CIA agent who looks off.
Why the Mary Sue though? I assume they are too afraid to make women look weak or fallible? Real CIA work is done in groups with a ton of bad guesses. She makes 1 single mistake. She forgets to lock the door and Ames walks into the room and reads everything acting super creepy. She later guesses he's the mole and has to convince everyone. She slowly convinces everyone one at a time which is actually super fun to watch in the last 2 episodes. But then a Russian KGB agent reveals that Ames is the mole. So practically they didn't need to do anything to find the mole. As soon as the Russian agent tells them about Ames and gives them concrete evidence they can start recording and following Ames. Before that they couldn't. Without their investigation Ames' arrest would have happened in the same year anyhow. This is how is works 95% of the time in the real world. You don't have agencies finding their own spies. Even in this show at one point the investigation team is shut down and the CIA leaders explain that they don't want to find the mole as it's not good for them. The Mary Sue character is a superhero who in the show cannot get actual results as it would be ahistorical.
Overall it was a good enough watch. I had to look away in the cringe parts. About 4 episodes are filler. But real history and spy work is fascinating enough to engage me. An editor reediting this show for fun could make it really fun! There is enough here to make a good show by removing 30% of it. Not even just scenes. Often the regular daily life stuff just continues for way too long. The camera lingers 3 seconds too long on characters to fill up the runtime making dialogue cringe. Reediting the Ames lines to make it flow would save the show. But who will do the editing?