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A Question of Loyalty - Warsaw. Rookie Sandbagger Mike Wallace sets out on an apparently simple assignment to escort a defecting agent to safety. The task suddenly turns highly dangerous when the agent fails to appear. When Wallace approaches his flat, he finds himself surrounded by inexplicably well-informed local police who seem to know him well. The mission has failed... but why? Wallace blames Shearburn, Head of Station in Warsaw, but Shearburn in his lightning-quick report to London, faults Wallace for bungling the operation. Whitehall sides with Shearburn, but Burnside, who knows his operative well, believes Wallace. As this tense drama builds, Burnside puts his career on the line to battle his superiors and in doing so, opens the door to yet another highly intriguing mission.
It Couldn't Happen Here - A prominent American senator is shot dead in his home by an unknown gunman. London's head of CIA suspects the FBI may be responsible. Sandbagger Willie Caine is assigned to protect the Senator's successor, a well-known civil rights leader, at the funeral. When two more apparently unconnected and accidental deaths occur and investigations reveal sinister implications, Burnside wants hard answers. Who is killing these people and why? What is the connection and where? And what, he asks, is the link between a high-ranking, secretive British Cabinet Minister and the assassinated American senator? Only one answer is certain. In the shadowy world of international intelligence, things are never quite what they seem.
Operation Kingmaker - Politics are never so treacherous as when practiced under the principles of diplomacy, power and the "old boys' network." When Burnside's superior, Sir James Greenley, is forced to retire, the question arises-who will take his place? Two strong candidates emerge-Matthew Peele, Greenley's deputy and John Tower Gibbs, Burnside's old enemy. Neither is acceptable to Burnside who has no official say in the final choice. When word leaks that Gibbs has already written a formal report advocating the breakup of the CIA-SIS Special Relationship, Burnside immediately knows he must take unusual steps to save the situation to promote the advancement of Peele, a leader he personally disdains. In doing so, Burnside sets the stage for political infighting, the likes of which Whitehall has never seen.
At All Costs - Berlin. Sandbagger Laura Dickens lies dying on the desolate cold strip of no-man's-land between East and West Germany, assassinated on the orders of Neil Burnside. Exactly one year later to the day, Bulgarian agent Galabov transmits a Top Priority signal offering enticing crucial information. His terms? An immediate meeting with Sandbagger Elliott in Bulgaria. Burnside is suspicious and unwilling to risk another Sandbagger. Why Elliott? Why now? Galabov is insistent and his terms precise-meet all details or no deal. For Burnside, the nightmare of Berlin begins again. Pressured by government spending cuts, the desire to safeguard his agents and the increasing need for an intelligence coup to provide Special Operations with a reprieve, Burnside struggles to make the right decision at all costs!
Enough of Ghosts - Brussels. A major international incident threatens when Sir Geoffrey Wellingham, Permanent Undersecretary of State, is mysteriously kidnapped by a group of terrorists while visiting NATO. For Neil Burnside, the threat is double-edged and personal. While the kidnapping is disquieting enough, Burnside is also aware of something worse. Wellingham was in possession of highly sensitive material, lent to him by Burnside himself. Who are the kidnappers and what are their demands? Burnside and his Whitehall colleagues must sit tight and wait... but not without strike-back initiatives in place. Rapidly briefed, two Sandbaggers head for Brussels, where CIA agents are already investigating from their end. What follows is a tense war of nerves that builds inevitably to a gripping and mind-numbing conclusion!
Customer Reviews
We rejoin the career of Neil Burnside (Roy Marsden), the lonely, driven, insubordinate and brilliant Director of Operations for Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Neil's fiefdom is small but crucial. He controls the "Sandbaggers", a select group of agents, no more than two or three, who are always on call to race to global points of crisis in MI6's struggle with the KGB and set thing aright. And sometimes they fail. However, this British television miniseries, which aired in 1978 and 1980, is not so much about Burnside's war with foreign adversaries as with those in London - his own boss, SIS Deputy Chief Peele (Jerome Willis), and the craven politicians in Whitehall and Number 10 Downing Street.
Of the six episodes in the set, perhaps the best is "At All Costs", wherein one of Neil's two Sandbaggers is caught in an espionage sting in Bulgaria, wounded by gunfire, and now lying alone, bleeding, and paralyzed in a Sophia safe house. For all his faults, Burnside is 100% committed to the safety of his agents. So now, in company with his last remaining Sandbagger, the Director takes the dangerous course, much to the keen displeasure of Peele and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, of going behind the Iron Curtain to Bulgaria's capital to get his man out.
I consider the least deserving episode is "It Couldn't Happen Here", which perhaps reflects the British scriptwriters' overly dramatic and sensationalistic view of America's penchant for guns and political assassination. In any case, Neil's CIA London colleague, Jeff Ross (Bob Sherman), who is usually quite level-headed, now comes across as a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist with the FBI as the Machiavellian villains. And U.S. senators drop like flies. To me, the episode was over the top.
In the last episode, "Operation Kingmaker", the MI6 Director General ("C", Richard Vernon) is forced into retirement with health problems. While considering his own career prospects and the fate of his department, Neil must now conspire to back the least unpalatable of two possible successors to C's chair. And no matter who gets the Prime Minister's nod, it's going to be dodgy going for Burnside in Set 3.
Marsden's Burnside is one of the most intriguing protagonists in recent memory. Undeniably wily and capable, he's also cold, ruthless and conniving. He's definitely the man you'd want running special operations for your government's foreign intelligence service, especially if you're the agent at the sharp end, but not a snake you'd want slithering through the grass at your garden party.
THE SANDBAGGERS is first rate entertainment. I look forward to viewing Set 3, the last, but shall be saddened when it's over.
I do not know if Roy Marsden received any award for this series, but he certainly should have. I can't think of a more apt word to describe his performance than "Perfect." And I do not use that word loosely.
And so we get to know his character, Neil Burnside, better and better. And we find that here is a man who will sacrifice anything in life, including those he loves most and his own character as a human being (and one does not doubt that even his own life may be added to this list) for his mission, a free world which at that time was threatened by the Soviets. And Willie Cane, excellently played by Ray Lonnen, stays very close in his shadow. Are these men extreme idealists (even heroes), or do they share a brutal psychopathology? Perhaps both? It is for the viewer to surmise.
So hold on to your living room chair, and keep a strong stomach, especially during the first episode, and the remaining episodes will continue to grasp your attention unto the final one, the most ironic of all of them. It's worth the ride to see one of the finest espionage series of all time.
Opening exactly one year after the devastating events of "Special... Read more
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