There’s ‘A Spy Among Friends’ in this compelling six-part drama

Alex Carey, of Homeland fame, has taken Ben Macintyre’s best-selling book and turned it into this compelling, six-part drama, based on the true story of Nicholas Elliott and Kim Philby: life-long friends who also happened to be British spies.

It is a tale of loyalty, trust and treachery with Philby, the most notorious British defector and Soviet double agent in history, at its centre.

Guy Pearce plays Philby, who was recruited by Russian Intelligence to penetrate MI6 and did so successfully between 1933 and 1963, thanks in part to his very upper-crust English persona.

In the opener, set in the wake of Philby’s escape to Moscow, his closest friend in Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, Nicholas Elliott, is under investigation by Lily Thomas from the Security Service. Did he facilitate Philby’s escape because he’s also a traitor working for the Russians, or is it just that his judgement was clouded at a critical moment by their 23-year friendship?

Damian Lewis, who plays Elliott, says the drama wanted to comprehensively explore that aspect of Philby’s actions, saying: “we wanted to get in behind the curtain and see the intimate betrayal between two friends.

“Nick Elliot really represents every man, he is everyone. He just happens to be Philby’s best friend and from that intimate relationship, the close friendship and that betrayal, we wanted to extrapolate and show its wider effects.

“But it starts very much and returns to this friendship and the intimate nature of betrayal between two friends – two lovers if you like.”

Anna Maxwell Martin’s character Lily is a working-class debriefer for MI5. Although fictitious and an amalgam of different people, she is crucial to the truth about Philby coming out, but was also key to the adaptation of Ben’s book.

BAFTA-winning producer Patrick Spence explains: “Alex had met with Ben five years ago. He was challenged with adapting A Spy Among Friends and went away on his own as an intellectual exercise to write the script for his own benefit. No one paid him, no one commissioned him directly – he just wanted to know if it could be done.

“If he was here he’d say that his way into the story was through Anna’s character, she’s what made it make sense for him in adapting it for television.”

Author Ben is delighted that his book has been adapted for the small screen, and is eager to give credit where it is due for the inspiration. “John Le Carre, who was a friend of mine and who’s idea this really was. I said to him: ‘what’s the best untold story of the Cold War?’ and without a moment’s hesitation he said ‘the way to look at this is through the prism of this particular friendship’.

“He knew Nicholas Elliot quite well, we had slightly different views about him, and I came to a slightly different conclusion overall.

“I love that, in a way, this story is born in the mind of a novelist, it then comes to a historian and non-fiction writer and then it goes to the screen. It’s a story that has these wonderful, different iterations and each time it gets richer.”