Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Sleepers Wake!

It must be that somebody else has made this point but I haven't seen it, so let me undertake to resuscitate a good-natured if not earth-moving BBC comedy offering from the 80s. The name is Sleepers and the subject is (ta da) Russian moles. An IMDB commentator explains:
[Nigel] Havers and [Warren] Clarke (who was also a dialogue coach on the project) play Soviet agents sent underground as sleepers to the UK in the Mod '60s by enigmatic KGB guru Gough. Now it's the 1980s, glasnost has begun the Soviet thaw, Gough is shut up in a mental hospital, and Havers and Clarke have become very British indeed--the former a successful investment banker, and the latter a union boss in northern England (married and with children, no less). The sleeper project is discovered in Moscow, and the two agents are contacted, much to their dismay (as Havers observes, why should he give up his posh and comfortable life "for a bowl of red cabbage and a bed-sit in Vladivostok?"). Hilarity ensues ...
The commentator calls it "endlessly entertaining" which seems to me a bit strong but it's certainly worth a run. And I must say that if the BBC hasn't gotten round releasing a DVD before, they should certainly want to so now.

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