![]() “Wholesaler, retailer, fixer, smuggler, Harry’s varied interests bring him into contact with everything and everyone – until the law catches up with him and it all comes crashing to a halt. In this newly partitioned city, a sharp working-class young man with sophisticated tastes can make a lot of money. The official synopsis for The Ipcress File reads: “Harry Palmer is a British army sergeant on the make in Berlin. Ruth Berry at ITV Studios revealed in 2020: “Being the first in a series of books featuring the intriguing Harry Palmer, it also has potential to run and run.” There’s no news yet on a second season, which would likely adapt Deighton’s 1964 novel Funeral in Berlin, but the show’s producers are said to be hoping their The Ipcress File series might be the first of many Harry Palmer adventures for ITV. The Ipcress File will premiere in the US and Canada on AMC+ on Thursday 19th May.Įach new episode will be released weekly through to the end of June.Ĭourtney Thomasma, general manager for AMC+, commented: “AMC+ is proud to partner with ITV Studios to bring John Hodge’s thrilling adaptation of the beloved spy novel to US audiences.” The “twist-laden spy thriller” also stars Lucy Boynton ( Bohemian Rhapsody), Tom Hollander ( The Night Manager), Ashley Thomas ( Top Boy), Tom Vaughan-Lawlor ( Dublin Murders), and David Dencik ( No Time to Die). ![]() ITV’s 2022 version stars Joe Cole ( Peaky Blinders) as Harry Palmer, the character made famous by Michael Caine. Len Deighton’s 1962 book was previously adapted into the classic Michael Caine film nearly sixty years ago, with four sequels following. Set in 1963 in Berlin and London, The Ipcress File is based on the classic espionage novel. The six-part mini-series launched in the UK earlier this year. ![]() ![]() But he never explains the scheme.It’s been announced when the new adaptation of The Ipcress File will begin in the US. After swimming in a morass of confusion for over an hour, we finally get to meet the Texas oil millionaire ( Ed Begley) who's masterminding the scheme, and Begley, turns in a biting, hilarious parody of right-wing oil millionaires. The movie gets better, not worse, toward the end. He's a big-shot spy now, like Bond and Flint, and who needs another one of those? He still has the mild Cockney accent, but he's lost his sense of humor and his love for the little things of life, like cooking. ![]() For one thing, we never get to know Palmer this time. Not so in "Billion Dollar Brain," the third film in which Caine plays Palmer. Palmer ( Michael Caine) was involved with two double agents, and at the moment when they cornered him in the warehouse and he had to decide, quick, which one was really on his side, the audience could share his danger because they understood it. (The spy movie " Triple Cross," on the other hand, did not.) In the first of the Harry Palmer series, "The Ipcress File," these conditions were met. "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold," for example, successfully explained a triple cross. If a spy movie is going to work, you have to understand it. How can you take it seriously when the spy's mission is never made clear? When, through faulty scripting or editing, the characters greet people they aren't supposed to know? When the Russian spy is killed by his own guys, and yet he didn't do anything wrong? When you can't quite get it straight what the threat to Western civilization is this time, and how the spy is going to save us? When you wonder if maybe the projectionist didn't forget to show one reel? "Billion Dollar Brain" falls in the fatal category: it is a spy movie that commits the unforgivable sin of losing track of its plot. ![]()
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