The Sandbaggers
Jan. 14th, 2009 10:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swan_towerIt's come to my attention that there are people on my flist who have never seen or even heard of The Sandbaggers. I must do what I can to remedy this.
The show ran for three seasons on the BBC around 1978-1980. This being the BBC, that means there are only twenty episodes, all told. Almost every one is brilliant; the few that aren't, were not written by the usual guy, and even then they don't suck.
This is a spy show, but as the main character points out in the first ep, "if you want James Bond, go to your library. If you want to run an intelligence service, sit at your desk and think, and then think again." 90% of most eps covers the planning, the piecing together of information, and most especially the politicking necessary to make the missions happen (or to stop them from going through). The fieldwork, when it happens, usually looks a bit cheap, partly because it isn't the slick flashiness Bond has conditioned you to expect, and partly because it's the BBC in the late seventies, and the production wasn't exactly rolling in cash.
"Sandbaggers" is a nickname for a three-man special section in the Secret Intelligence Service, aka MI6. The main character, Neil Burnside, is the Director of Operations for SIS, but the show focuses particularly on the deployment of the Sandbaggers for particularly delicate or difficult missions. In practice, this means the plots often involve Burnside ricocheting back and forth between the offices of C (the head of SIS), the deputy chief, and the Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, as he tries to get clearance for or obstruct various operations. Also, thanks to a "special relationship" of information-sharing between SIS and the CIA, he's usually wheeling and dealing with the head of their London station. Burnside, being a character somewhat of a type with Francis Crawford of Lymond and Dr. Gregory House, is very very good at what he does, but not remotely afraid to be a manipulative bastard in pursuit of that end.
I mentioned that a few of the eps are less good. This is because much of the show's awesomeness derives from its scripts, written by a guy named Ian Mackintosh, about whom there is much mysteriousness. It's widely speculated, even by people who worked on the show, that Mackintosh was ex-naval intelligence himself. The scripts certainly came close enough to realism that one of them was censored under the Official Secrets Act; that's why there are only six episodes in the second season.
And why didn't he write all of the third season? Because he disappeared. Without a trace. He was flying in Alaska with a friend who was (I believe) an ex-RAF pilot, and they radioed in a call for help just before flying into the one zone that wasn't covered by US or Soviet radar. Nothing was ever seen of them again. It's possible they crashed into the ocean and the wreckage all sank, but it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to wonder; some of the people involved in the show honestly thought Mackintosh had defected to the USSR. They found no sign of him after the Iron Curtain fell, though, so it remains a complete mystery to this day.
So that's why you get only twenty episodes. They hired people to fill out the remainder of the third season, but understood that nobody was up to Mackintosh's standard, and decided to stop there.
You can get the show on DVD these days. The image and sound quality are bad enough that the disc puts up a disclaimer/apology while it's loading, but the scripts and the acting are fantastic, full of twisty plot and authorial ruthlessness.
. . . and now I want to go watch more, instead of doing the work I should do. Siiiiiiigh.
The show ran for three seasons on the BBC around 1978-1980. This being the BBC, that means there are only twenty episodes, all told. Almost every one is brilliant; the few that aren't, were not written by the usual guy, and even then they don't suck.
This is a spy show, but as the main character points out in the first ep, "if you want James Bond, go to your library. If you want to run an intelligence service, sit at your desk and think, and then think again." 90% of most eps covers the planning, the piecing together of information, and most especially the politicking necessary to make the missions happen (or to stop them from going through). The fieldwork, when it happens, usually looks a bit cheap, partly because it isn't the slick flashiness Bond has conditioned you to expect, and partly because it's the BBC in the late seventies, and the production wasn't exactly rolling in cash.
"Sandbaggers" is a nickname for a three-man special section in the Secret Intelligence Service, aka MI6. The main character, Neil Burnside, is the Director of Operations for SIS, but the show focuses particularly on the deployment of the Sandbaggers for particularly delicate or difficult missions. In practice, this means the plots often involve Burnside ricocheting back and forth between the offices of C (the head of SIS), the deputy chief, and the Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, as he tries to get clearance for or obstruct various operations. Also, thanks to a "special relationship" of information-sharing between SIS and the CIA, he's usually wheeling and dealing with the head of their London station. Burnside, being a character somewhat of a type with Francis Crawford of Lymond and Dr. Gregory House, is very very good at what he does, but not remotely afraid to be a manipulative bastard in pursuit of that end.
I mentioned that a few of the eps are less good. This is because much of the show's awesomeness derives from its scripts, written by a guy named Ian Mackintosh, about whom there is much mysteriousness. It's widely speculated, even by people who worked on the show, that Mackintosh was ex-naval intelligence himself. The scripts certainly came close enough to realism that one of them was censored under the Official Secrets Act; that's why there are only six episodes in the second season.
And why didn't he write all of the third season? Because he disappeared. Without a trace. He was flying in Alaska with a friend who was (I believe) an ex-RAF pilot, and they radioed in a call for help just before flying into the one zone that wasn't covered by US or Soviet radar. Nothing was ever seen of them again. It's possible they crashed into the ocean and the wreckage all sank, but it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to wonder; some of the people involved in the show honestly thought Mackintosh had defected to the USSR. They found no sign of him after the Iron Curtain fell, though, so it remains a complete mystery to this day.
So that's why you get only twenty episodes. They hired people to fill out the remainder of the third season, but understood that nobody was up to Mackintosh's standard, and decided to stop there.
You can get the show on DVD these days. The image and sound quality are bad enough that the disc puts up a disclaimer/apology while it's loading, but the scripts and the acting are fantastic, full of twisty plot and authorial ruthlessness.
. . . and now I want to go watch more, instead of doing the work I should do. Siiiiiiigh.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 07:22 pm (UTC)-k
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Date: 2009-01-14 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 07:53 pm (UTC)I forget, have you read Queen & Country? If not, I would recommend it. It is (obviously) ripped off from Sandbaggers, but well executed nonetheless.
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Date: 2009-01-14 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 08:16 pm (UTC)It's probably time to watch them again -- after I finish watching Criminal Minds.
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Date: 2009-01-14 08:30 pm (UTC)Their other "American" characters, on the other hand, are pretty bad sometimes. And I'm currently watching the ep where the American politician from West Virginia (who sounds like he's from West Texas, natch) is out riding . . . on an English saddle. Not a Western one.
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Date: 2009-01-15 05:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 09:18 pm (UTC)*bounce bounce bounce*
(Sorry, was reading along on fof and I have been going show in desperate need of a (modern) fandom about Sandbaggers for a while now....)
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Date: 2009-01-14 09:31 pm (UTC)And you'd think there would be at least a few SB/Professionals crossovers out there in fic-land, but I've never found any (and don't have the chops to write one myself, alas).
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Date: 2009-01-15 03:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-15 07:06 am (UTC)This is my feeling on why there isn't more fanfic of Dorothy Dunnett, either. I know I feel completely inadequate to the task of ficcing her characters, and I do this for a living.
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Date: 2009-01-15 05:36 am (UTC)My big issue with Sandbaggers is that the DVDs are so ridiculously expensive. Makes me sad, really. Anyway, i'm really, really glad you showed it to me. I don't know that there's anything out there that holds a candle to it.
Warren Ellis paid it a nice homage in one of his X-Men issues a while back; he had Pete Wisdom doing everything but yelling at his secretary for coffee.
And i was just thinking a few minutes ago about what i would have had the opening shot of S4 be if i were in charge. (It starts with Willie sitting at his desk...)
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Date: 2009-01-15 07:05 am (UTC)I've said it before, but the handling of Diane is one of my favorite things. Yes, Burnside yells at her to bring the coffee, but then you also get scenes like the one where she psychoanalyzes the Sandbaggers and (when Burnside tries to tell her she's wrong) points out that she's been in the ops directorate longer than he has.
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Date: 2009-01-15 11:54 pm (UTC)Ooh! The show totally meets the criteria for the Bechdel rule! *grin*
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Date: 2011-02-19 01:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-19 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-19 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-19 09:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-13 03:21 am (UTC)The Sandbaggers does a lot of cut/reverse cut talk and some walk-and-talk, but it also moves the actors around in the studio a fair amout, or positions them unusually in the studio or the frame, to keep things interesting and comment on the dynamics of the storylines.
I have some screencaps I took while watching the series that illustrate this. (I forgot to note from which episode each one came from, but it's probably less spoilery for random readers of your LJ to post them without too much context.)
Burnside, thinking, alone in his office:
Or discussing things with Willie in the pit:
Karen, pondering whether to call Neil:
Burnside and the new C discussing their latest dick-measuring contest (the staging, which has them both standing side-by-side, and the framing, keeping things above waist level with the ruler just in frame, are golden in this scene):
When Jeff has been invited into Neil's kitchen, bringing a peace offering after their falling-out: