Spies Of Warsaw

This two-part period spy thriller was a great one-off epic.

 Based on the novel by Alan Furst, this story felt different from a usual spy drama, which was mainly due to the central character Lt. Col. Jean-Francois Mercier. He wasn’t the usual spy, who enjoys mingling with the wealthy, womanising and seeking the big action, but instead felt more like a normal person who didn’t like the pomp and ceremony and spied in a very secret and well organised way in order for him to remain undetected.

Mercier's relationship with Anna Skarbek was also different as it wasn't the usual thing of the woman just falls for the man. Mainly by the fact that Anna is in a relationship and the supposed death of her partner Max Mostov leads her to flee to Spain, while Mercier is sent to Czechoslovakia. It was good how having the two start an affair and then get torn apart allowed for me to want them to find each other again and reunite, which later happens. The two character alone do a lot to keep the story going and showing different aspects of the pre-war Europe that we may not know much about.

The setting of the story, in pre-war 1937 Warsaw where the emerging presence of the Nazis and the prospect of war make it a very interesting background. This setting allowed for much of the tension to be created as Mercier tried to discover what the Nazis were planning and at the end of the story where Mercier and Anna had to escape Warsaw, while a Jewish couple took their own lives after becoming informants for Mercier and pursued by the Nazis, which was done in a very touching and appropriate manner.

There were great performances from David Tennant as Mercier and Janet Montgomery as Anna, with good portrayals from Ellie Haddington, Piotr Baumann, Marcin Dorocinski, Radoslaw Kaim, Linda Bassett and Allan Corduner.

Black Mirror: Series 2 - Episode 1

This was a compelling opening episode to the second series dealing with a very interesting concept.

Centring around the idea of being able to talk to a virtual version pasted love one constructed from their social media content, the story of Martha's struggle in the aftermath of the death of her boyfriend Ash was very interesting. I have myself thought about how it could be possible to construct a clone version of yourself from the content we place on social network sites and this story shows the positives and negatives of this possibility. The scheme in the story uses public information at first to allow people to talk via email to the virtual versions of their love ones and then allowing the use of private information enables for a more authentic version to emerge. An idea which is terrifying and intriguing at the same time.

I can see how the idea would help people to cope with the grief but at the same time it would stop the person from moving on. It also fed into this idea of how much social media has integrated into their lives and how much control it could have over us. This can certainly be seen when the software was able to replicate Ash's voice and then when she moved onto the next level. This was where Martha was able to 'brew' a physical clone of Ash, which when revealed was creepy.

The character of Martha was a strong and very easy to sympathise with and it was understandable how she changed from disgust at initially learning of the scheme to her later use of it. She held and carried the story way and she makes me consider what I would do in that situation. Her development throughout worked well and her conflicting emotions over what she did were interesting to see, especially as she realises that the clone was not really Ash and how it couldn't portray the real character of its namesake. When she tells the clone to jump over a cliff it was very powerful and the ending left a few questions in the air.

Hayley Atwell and Domhnall Gleeson gave great performances and really made the story strong and powerful.