Reilly:Ace of Spies

I'm going to depart this week from my usual movie review to tout one of the best-produced and most interesting miniseries I've ever seen on television. Reilly: Ace of Spies (1983-87) is a series made for British TV.

The series, written by Troy Kennedy-Martin and based on the book Ace of Spies by Robin B. Lockhart, tells the story of an actual British agent in the early years of this century who became the world's first international spy and the model, it's said, for the fictional James Bond.

Known as a womanizing scoundrel as well as a master spy, Russian-born Sidney Reilly (his real name was Rosenblum; he was the illegitimate child of his Austrian mother and her Jewish lover, and he took an Irish name the better to operate in the anti-Semitic Europe of his day), was a key espionage player during the power-jockeying years leading up to the First World War. Among Reilly's exploits, dramatized in this series, was his discovery of Russian oil exploration in the Middle East, his stealing plans for the British of German battleships before the war, and, most incredibly, his part in an attempted overthrow of the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution. Among his escapades was to marry more than once, unlawfully, and to yield to his attraction to his half-sister.

Sam Neill, his hair slicked down and parted in the middle, looking very smart and turn-of-the-century, plays Reilly with perfect credibility. (Lately, as in Jurassic Park and The Hunt for Red October; he plays character roles; here he's a handsome leading man.) He moves elegantly through the series, dressed impeccably as a gentleman, sometimes disguised in working-class garb (once in black robes as a Catholic priest), and exuding a sense of worldly calculation. Among other fine actors in the series are Leo McKern, who plays the cynical and scheming Basil Zaharov, John Rhys-Davies, and Jeananne Crowley as Reilly's on-and-off-again wife Margaret. The series was beautifully shot to give us the look and atmosphere of its European and Eastern settings in the years 1901 to 1918.

In a memorable scene with his half-sister, in which Reilly recounts his troubled relationship with their father and his career in the years since they last saw each other, he admits to being a spy and then nails down the qualifications:

"You have to see life as a bit of a game," he says. "And you have to have the ability to manipulate people, I suppose."

The series was directed by Jim Goddard, who also directed Shanghai Surprise, which "starred" Sean Penn and Madonna when those two were briefly a real-life couple, and which was such a bomb, I gather, that you can't find it on video.

Reilly: Ace of Spies, on the other hand, is probably Goddard's prime effort. If I had the money, I'd order all four videos from amazon.com.