Critic Reviews

Muscular writing and powerful performances.... You can get sucked in by the spycraft, but this is also a parable about queerness, and a fascinating character piece for Whishaw.

A riveting existential mystery. [22 Jan 2016, p.66]

It’s elliptical and indirect at times--and sometimes a little too enigmatic--but its narrative drive is strengthened by a percolating anger at injustice, fear-mongering and prejudice. This haunting drama becomes more captivating over the course of its five installments, thanks in large part to sensational performances from Ben Whishaw, Jim Broadbent and Charlotte Rampling.

There are touches in Spy that seem rather needlessly gothic and unnecessarily grim, but they're more than redeemed by its sustained sense of place and by wonderful performances from Whishaw, Broadbent and, in smaller roles, Holcroft and Charlotte Rampling. And unlike so many modern projects, it seems to be exactly the length it should be, with pauses in the action there to draw us into the characters rather than just as padding.

[A] gorgeously somber BBC America miniseries.

Rob Smith's wildly original five-part London Spy is an emotional tour de force for rising star Ben Whishaw. [18-31 Jan 2016, p.15]

London Spy, premiering Jan. 21 on BBC America, is a complex, sometimes cryptic import that is worth puzzling over.

You may or may not struggle with the heightened, heated-up filmmaking in London Spy, which is filled with artful camera angles and non-linear time leaps, but you will likely fall under Whishaw’s spell.

London Spy is provocative and strange.

London Spy is a love story, then, between Danny and Alex first and foremost--one of the most intimate and nuanced of gay love stories put on TV in some time. Smith’s precision in this arena is at the heart of what makes London Spy so good.