The show depicts what James Bond's Quartermaster does on his days off. All jokes aside, Ben Whishaw stars as the protagonist, Daniel. He is down on his luck: drugs get taken, he lives in a shared home and only has the fatherly figure of Jim Broadbent to keep him out of trouble. That is until he meets a man named Alex whom he starts an small relationship with that grows over time. However, during a certain point in the first episode, Daniel realises that he hasn't seen Alex for a longer period of time than usual and investigations lead him to find Alex's dead body, mysteriously hidden in the attic of his apartment.
The first episode, despite the name, has very little to do with spies at all. It features the kind of tropes that most British dramas lean towards. For example, the protagonist being down on his luck, looking into the far distance at nothing, staring at inanimate objects as if contemplating the very existence of life itself. The first half hour of the episode is filled with this which I personally think to be a bored, tired, overused and ultimately time-wasting trope. For some reason British dramas always have the protagonist in a dimly lit room doing nothing, everyone has to be in some depressed state. An american audience watching a British drama (like that would happen often) would most likely think that all Brits sit in the corner of their rooms crying to themselves. Like I said, I personally think it is over-used and really left me really uninterested in the story or character, partly because very little was being seen.
The story does start to pick up, however, after a few meetings between Daniel and Alex. The characters actually go to places, even to certain locations in Hoo, Kent which I can actually see from my bedroom window. This does pose a location error in which a short drive for both of the characters takes them all the way from the centre of London to the near Kingsnorth Power Station in Kent. a relationship starts to form between the two and Alex eventually meets with Daniel's fatherly figure as before mentioned. Jim Broadbent's performance here is akin to someone who seems protective of their kin, but will not save them if they put themselves down a self-destructive path.
The interesting thing about the character of Alex is that he appears to be rather a blank slate. He gives off a fake name and never lets Daniel know who he really is. This makes for an interesting dilemma in the first episode as Daniel has an obsession with someone but does't really know who he is.
The 'spy' aspect comes into play during the last ten minutes of the first episode when Alex's body is discovered and Daniel eventually finds out that Alex actually worked for the government, leading Daniel to steal clues from the investigation site and try to solve the mystery behind who Alex really was.
Overall, the series is slow to actually get to its feet as the life contemplating Ben Whishaw continues to mope around but we eventually get a somewhat intriguing mystery. In certain areas in particular, the atmosphere can be quite chilling.
In terms of how this links into my own project. I wanted to see how the atmosphere of a spy thriller would be handled. It turns out that the slow and steady route is the way to go for spy thrillers. However, when most of the slow parts appear to just be filler, this makes a lot of it quite bland. I would like to just get straight to the point in my own film.
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