cor blimey

March 13, 2004

I bought these Sandbaggers DVDs on Fraction‘s recommendation about a few months ago but I’m only now getting around to watching them. He told me they were all about this crazy spy shit and it was British so you know it had to be good. After I mentioned to him that I bought the set, he was like “Yeah, it’s about as good as TV gets when it only involves a dude sitting at a desk for 60 minutes.” Um. Shouldn’t spy shit have a little running around or something?

Anyway, he was right and Sandbaggers is pretty rad, desktalking or no. It’s a really old series, so the production values are absolute ass on plastic for the DVD but it just kinda adds to the old skool PBS flavor. The Sandbaggers are the tiny, tiny Special Intelligence Section of MI-6 (I think I have that right) and the political side of espionage. No James Bond, no guns… one guy has a rocket launcher but never gets to shoot it. It’s really about dealing with different countries and their intelligence departments during the Cold War, about the phone calls and the budgets and the paperwork. There’s really nothing on modern TV to compare it to, except maybe those Taiwan/China or India/Pakistan episodes of West Wing. I know it sounds kind of boring, but how can you not be fascinated by Burnside, the director of operations of SIS? In one episode, a Sandbagger wants to quit to be with his family. What does Burnside do? He puts a tail on his fiancee and sweats her like she stole his bike.

It’s British. It must be good!

Posted in Idiot Box