As with most adaptations, a comparison with Joseph Conrad's source- text might prove insignificant: suffice to say that Tony Marchant's screenplay bears as much relationship to the novel as Charles Bennett's version for Alfred Hitchcock's SABOTAGE (1936). The plot and characters are there, but Charles McDougall's BBC production is best approached on its own terms.
From the beginning we are plunged into the familiar world of BBC Victorian London - a miasma of darkened streets, thick mud and rickety buildings illuminated with blue-gray light. The interior of Verloc'; (Toby Jones's) seedy Soho shop is illuminated by dim yellow lights that suggest that the wares on offer are not the true reason for the shop's existence. And so it proves: Verloc is a double- agent working both for the Russians and the British, as well as presiding over meetings of an anarchist group attended by the Professor (Ian Hart) and Yundt (Christopher Fairbank), among others.
Director McDougall contrasts this nether-world with the stylish bourgeois world of the embassies, where the Russian consul Vladimir (David Dawson) sits behind a desk in a bejeweled room, the very epitome of surface respectability. Through such contrasts the production makes a pointed criticism of so-called "Victorian Values," where lower- and lower-middle class tradespeople like Verloc are employed to do the upper class's dirty work for them, and cannot really resist for fear of being socially exposed.
Yet things take a much darker turn after the second episode when Verloc's plan to blow up the Royal Observatory at Greenwich goes horribly wrong, and his brother-in-law Stevie (Charlie Hamblett), an innocent young man with learning difficulties, is killed instead. We are made painfully aware of the true consequences of terrorism; it is not the perpetrators who suffer but civilians instead. Verloc tries his utmost to exonerate himself; but with metaphorical blood on his hands, he just seems like a coward unwilling (or unable) to take responsibility for his actions. He meets a violent end which seems somehow right in terms of the story's logic.
But the story has not finished yet: although the Greenwich bombing causes something of a stir in the press, as well as in Parliament, the Establishment manages to close ranks, with no one really being brought to justice for the crime. Assistant Commissioner Stone (Tom Goodman-Hill) preserves his reputation, enabling him to attend the best society parties, while Vladimir continues in his role as a Russian diplomat engaging in subversive activity. Verloc's death causes no more than a ripple of disquiet among these people; he might be gone, but there is always another double agent ready and willing to take his place, who might be equally dispensable in the future.
In the end we feel little else but a sense of frustration at an amoral world where former prisoners such as Michaelis (Tom Vaughan- Lawlor) are automatically suspected of committing further crimes, even though they have never been near the actual scene where the felony took place; and the ruling classes seem to continue the endless whirl of parties, balls, and other gatherings with little or no thought for others' suffering.
This is an angry production, one which castigates everyone with even a tenuous connection to state-sponsored terrorism for the crime of indifference, while suggesting that there is little or no solution to this problem. The cast are uniformly excellent, especially Hamblett as Stevie and Vicky McClure as Verloc's unfortunate spouse.
From the beginning we are plunged into the familiar world of BBC Victorian London - a miasma of darkened streets, thick mud and rickety buildings illuminated with blue-gray light. The interior of Verloc'; (Toby Jones's) seedy Soho shop is illuminated by dim yellow lights that suggest that the wares on offer are not the true reason for the shop's existence. And so it proves: Verloc is a double- agent working both for the Russians and the British, as well as presiding over meetings of an anarchist group attended by the Professor (Ian Hart) and Yundt (Christopher Fairbank), among others.
Director McDougall contrasts this nether-world with the stylish bourgeois world of the embassies, where the Russian consul Vladimir (David Dawson) sits behind a desk in a bejeweled room, the very epitome of surface respectability. Through such contrasts the production makes a pointed criticism of so-called "Victorian Values," where lower- and lower-middle class tradespeople like Verloc are employed to do the upper class's dirty work for them, and cannot really resist for fear of being socially exposed.
Yet things take a much darker turn after the second episode when Verloc's plan to blow up the Royal Observatory at Greenwich goes horribly wrong, and his brother-in-law Stevie (Charlie Hamblett), an innocent young man with learning difficulties, is killed instead. We are made painfully aware of the true consequences of terrorism; it is not the perpetrators who suffer but civilians instead. Verloc tries his utmost to exonerate himself; but with metaphorical blood on his hands, he just seems like a coward unwilling (or unable) to take responsibility for his actions. He meets a violent end which seems somehow right in terms of the story's logic.
But the story has not finished yet: although the Greenwich bombing causes something of a stir in the press, as well as in Parliament, the Establishment manages to close ranks, with no one really being brought to justice for the crime. Assistant Commissioner Stone (Tom Goodman-Hill) preserves his reputation, enabling him to attend the best society parties, while Vladimir continues in his role as a Russian diplomat engaging in subversive activity. Verloc's death causes no more than a ripple of disquiet among these people; he might be gone, but there is always another double agent ready and willing to take his place, who might be equally dispensable in the future.
In the end we feel little else but a sense of frustration at an amoral world where former prisoners such as Michaelis (Tom Vaughan- Lawlor) are automatically suspected of committing further crimes, even though they have never been near the actual scene where the felony took place; and the ruling classes seem to continue the endless whirl of parties, balls, and other gatherings with little or no thought for others' suffering.
This is an angry production, one which castigates everyone with even a tenuous connection to state-sponsored terrorism for the crime of indifference, while suggesting that there is little or no solution to this problem. The cast are uniformly excellent, especially Hamblett as Stevie and Vicky McClure as Verloc's unfortunate spouse.
