Spy

In Spy the contestants are required to live under an assumed name and try to become a secret agent.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

IAN MCMILLAN:
I like the start of it, the feel of it and the sense of it. The music, cutting, atmospheric, it felt like 24. I like the jokes, where they pretend they're at the Strand railway station I like the tutors.

MARK LAWSON:
And these tutors are real, we're told, former agents, MI5, CIA. This is one of the questions raised. Are they?

IAN MCMILLAN:
I don't think they are. When it said information, classified. I'm sure I've seen that woman in pantomime in Rotherham. I'm sure they're actors. But when I started, I liked that bit and I was going along with it. And then when we saw the interrogation, I felt really soiled by that. I felt he was being prurient watching it. It felt like they're saying, trust nobody. Be paranoid. Be paranoid, that's a good thing. I half expected Mrs Thatcher to come in and say, there's no such thing as society. I felt like collectivism is out of the window. By the end I though, "I don't want to watch this anymore".

MARK LAWSON:
But you can't be a collective spy. You have to trust no-one and be on your own.

IAN MCMILLAN:
But it felt like it was catching some kind of a zeitgeist that says "Yes, that's how we all are now". You sit in the pub or on the bus and don't talk to anyone because you don't trust them. So it is capturing the moment in that way but it didn't feel like a nice moment to me.

MARK LAWSON:
James, every channel wants its reality TV programme, and so many of them have been variations of putting people in a house and seeing what happens. I thought this had a twist of originality.

JAMES BROWN:
I think it will be a big hit. In the same way Hell's Kitchen explained hopefully what it's like to work in a kitchen, this is a reality show that explains, supposedly, how to be a spy. It's not just how people interact. I was fascinated how these people, whatever drives them to become a spy on television, and see how they slowly become the schmucks that is people like Lee Harvey Oswald. And I was so fascinated by it I rang the BBC and said, send me another 3. I sat up until 2.30 last night getting obsessed with them. They are just training them to become, conmen, liars, cheats. So it's opportunity to become a criminal and get paid by the Government.

MARK LAWSON:
Some of the set-ups were good. The first one they have to blag their way into an apartment block, which they claim are real people, and then be seen drinking a glass of water on the balcony. I thought they were inventive challenges?

JULIE MYERSON:
I didn't. I think it's ludicrous. I'm amazed at what you're saying. First of all, if those tutors aren't real ex-agents, then that's a real problem for me.

MARK LAWSON:
We were told they are.

JULIE MYERSON:
Well they've got to be because that's the only point in watching it, if we are being shown how real spies are or were trained, that's vaguely interesting. It is entertaining, and I laughed a lot, but for the wrong reasons. These people who are supposed to be eight of the best of 5,000 applicants, they are the stupidest people I've ever seen on television. What you laugh at is how ridiculous they are. There are some who think the way to look like a spy is to swivel your head around.

MARK LAWSON:
They are far brighter than people in Big Brother 5. There are three handlers, we are told they are real and they tell spies what to do. Ian, I thought the tone wanders a bit, because they make this big thing, this secret spy school under a Tube station, but that's in the last James bond film anyway. There are moments of reality. I was impressed, the moment where they ambushed them in the middle of the night. They go to bed in the safe house and then suddenly people burst in and dragged them out. I take it on faith that one of the contestants faints at that point.

IAN MCMILLAN:
That was the bit when I started really not liking it.

MARK LAWSON:
If I was controller of BBC Two I would have put it straight on to BBC Two which is perhaps why I'm not and shouldn't be. But I really thought this was an original twist on the reality genre.