If I had to summarise this miniseries, I'd call it a an entertainingly missed potential.
It becomes clearly from the onset that the premise is awesome and could easily use an expanded series to treat various details with the care they deserve. Otherwise, the story gets put on so much fast forward that the suspension of disbelief required to enjoy the more palatable plot points can easily be seen as insurmountable to many. For me it worked as a decided to write off weaker writing points to cliches required to bring this closer to today's audience (keeping to close to the likes of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" would make it a bit tedious).
All in all it's watchable and the plot itself is even surprisingly smart given the lacking implementation. The acting is great (Hinds, Cox and Chaplin carry it with gumption).
What killed it for me in the end was the fast-fire Deux-ex-machina moments thrown in the end (the identity of some double agent thought to have put in motion the plot years before the timeline of the series is served on a platter with no details linked to the reveal - it's just spat out - the idea itself would have been brilliant had it been an expanded subplot of an extended series).
That's Netflix for you ....
It becomes clearly from the onset that the premise is awesome and could easily use an expanded series to treat various details with the care they deserve. Otherwise, the story gets put on so much fast forward that the suspension of disbelief required to enjoy the more palatable plot points can easily be seen as insurmountable to many. For me it worked as a decided to write off weaker writing points to cliches required to bring this closer to today's audience (keeping to close to the likes of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" would make it a bit tedious).
All in all it's watchable and the plot itself is even surprisingly smart given the lacking implementation. The acting is great (Hinds, Cox and Chaplin carry it with gumption).
What killed it for me in the end was the fast-fire Deux-ex-machina moments thrown in the end (the identity of some double agent thought to have put in motion the plot years before the timeline of the series is served on a platter with no details linked to the reveal - it's just spat out - the idea itself would have been brilliant had it been an expanded subplot of an extended series).
That's Netflix for you ....