A dirty business
Nov. 22nd, 2002 09:26 pm"Our battles aren't fought at the end of a parachute. They're won and lost in drab, dreary corridors in Westminster-and hopefully in Oslo. If you want James Bond go to your library, but if you want a successful operation sit at your desk and think, and then think again."The Sandbaggers, a late 1970s television series about the fictitious(?) "Special Section" of the British Special Intelligence Service, or MI6 is low budget, cheaply shot, and all the exterior locations from Gibraltar to Cyprus to the Kola Peninsula all look like they were filmed in North England (which they were).
-- Neil Burnside (Roy Marsden), "First Principles"
But as spy stories go, it's bloody marvellous. It's exactly the kind of realistic spy story I like - no real big booms, or James Bond action sequences - but dealing more with the control end of things; the tension in the Ops room when sending out operatives, the battles with bureaucracy for clearance, the political maneuverings and motivations behind operations, the basica amorality and sometimes immorality done in the name of national security. In the world of the Sandbaggers, your own government is sometimes your worst enemy, death comes quick and possibly from the end of an colleague's rifle, and everyone's both pawn and player. It's mostly talking heads, but thrilling and shocking stuff nonetheless - and it feels real, to the point where you sometimes need a shower after watching an episode.
Only two out of the three series are available on DVD (13 out of 20 episodes). The series itself was ended because the main writer, Ian Mackintosh (a former Navy man and reputed to be an intelligence operative as well) died suddenly - they tried new writers but it just wasn't the same.
Because of the cheap way it was shot, the print is abysmal, with occasional flutters, and the sound needs to be turned up, but it's watchable, and the material's so good you probably won't care, in the end. It was apparently a favorite of the CIA's, and a heavy influence on Greg Rucka's excellent comic book Queen and Country. After watching the actual show, I realize that Q&C isn't just heavily influenced by Q&C - it's basically Rucka doing thinly disguised Sandbagger fanfic. But still, if anyone wanted to do Sandbaggers: The Next Generation, this would probably be the closest thing to it, and Rucka's writing is masterful enough to carry it off without seeming too much like a pale imitation of the original.
Basically, it was a great TV series which sad to say, was underrated in its lifetime and that very few people know about. Doing my best to spread the word.