Wed 11 Jul 2018
A TV Series Review by Michael Shonk: THE SANDBAGGERS (1978, 1980)
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV Espionage & Spies[17] Comments
THE SANDBAGGERS. ITV/Yorkshire Television. First Series: September 18, 1978 – October 30, 1978; second series: January 28, 1980 – March 3, 1980; third series: June 9, 1980 – July 28, 1980. Created by Ian Mackintosh. Cast: Roy Marsden as Neil Burnside, Ray Lonnen as Willie Caine, Bob Sherman as Jeff Ross, Alan MacNaughtan as Sir Geoffrey Wellingham, Jerome Willis as Matthew Peele. Executive Producer: David Cunliffe. Producer: Michael Ferguson (all episode but one) or Derek Bennett (one episode).
Forgotten today, the British TV spy series THE SANDBAGGERS remains one of television’s greatest spy dramas. THE SANDBAGGERS featured a dark realism style. It was a cynical spy drama that existed during a time when it was difficult to know who the good guys were. THE SANDBAGGERS showed life in the real SIS (MI5) and gave a more truthful look at both sides during the Cold War then they taught us in school.
The series was originally meant to be a temporary fill-in when another planned series for Yorkshire TV fell apart. THE SANDBAGGERS was to last only one series (series is the British term for season) of seven episodes. It would prove popular enough to last two more series and would have made a fourth if not for the mysterious disappearance of creator and probable spy Ian Mackintosh.
In an outline attempting to sell the premise as a TV series Mackintosh described the series primary focus would be “with the triumphs and failures of SIS headquarters, the power-struggles within SIS itself and the uses and abuse of its power vis-à -vis Government policy.â€
It is impossible to think of THE SANDBAGGERS without Ian Mackintosh. Hamish Ian Mackintosh MBE (July 26, 1940 – last known alive July 7, 1979) served in the Royal Navy from 1958-1976 and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. On his retirement from the Royal Navy he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).
Mackintosh tried writing while still in the Navy and his first of five thrillers A SLAYING IN SEPTEMBER was published in 1967. All five were failures with critics and readers and our own Mystery*File reviewer Steve, which you can read here.
In 1973 Mackintosh co-created the admired BBC TV series WARSHIP (1973-1977). Ian would go on to create and write WILDE ALLIANCE (ITV 1978), THUNDERCLOUD (ITV 1979) and THE SANDBAGGERS, all three for Yorkshire Television. He also wrote tie-in novels for WARSHIP, WILDE ALLIANCE and THE SANDBAGGERS. One other tie-in novel for THE SANDBAGGERS was THE SANDBAGGER: THINK OF A NUMBER (1980) written by Donald Lancaster (YELLOWTHREAD STREET writer William Marshall). Ian also wrote some non-fiction books many featuring his interest in planes and military history.
While Ian Mackintosh was the creative spirit behind the success of THE SANDBAGGERS others played equally important roles in the series success. David Cunliffe had worked in British television since the 1950s. He first met Mackintosh when both worked on the series WARSHIP and became friends. Cunliffe was the Controller of Drama at Yorkshire Television and worked with Ian on all three YTV series Mackintosh created and wrote. Yorkshire Television was the local Leeds and Yorkshire area ITV affiliate and produced television programs for ITV including such series as HARRY’S GAME, THE MAIN CHANCE and RAFFLES. Cunliffe was in charge of every aspect of THE SANDBAGGERS including final script approval.
Derek Bennett was the director and producer for the first episode filmed (the third episodes aired) IS YOUR JOURNEY REALLY NECESSARY but a disagreement between Bennett and Mackintosh forced Derek to leave. Michael Ferguson would replace Bennett. Cunliffe turned daily production decisions over to Ferguson who as producer and sometime director would remain for the entire run.
Not surprisingly for British TV, at the time the series had a low budget and sometimes it showed. During series one Roy Marsden was the highest paid in the cast making around $1900 an episode.
The soundtrack was a positive aspect of the series. It did not have one (with rare exceptions). Often such absence of music (not unusual for early British TV) can make scenes seem awkward or slow paced, but it worked to this realistic drama’s advantage. TV and film spies are known for great theme songs and THE SANDBAGGERS has one of the best, written by Roy Budd (GET CARTER).
Roy Marsden (P.J. JAMES’ ADAM DALGLIESH CHRONICLES) was the perfect fit and first choice to play Neil Burnside — the ruthless, arrogant Director of Operations. Marsden modeled his portrayal of Burnside on his observations of Mackintosh. It was a good choice as Marsden gave Burnside a depth and allowed the audience to still root for and respect the at times unlikable character.
Burnside had two advantages in running the SIS operations. His first was based on the very real special relationship the SIS had with the CIA. The CIA respected the opinions of the SIS and thus shared information with the small British agency that it shared with no other country or agency. This gave Burnside information others did not have.
Head of London Station for the CIA was Jeff Ross. Ross and Burnside worked well together and respected each other but that did not stop both from using the other when it was in the best interest of their agency.
The second advantage was more personal. Burnside was the ex-son-in-law and still a friend of the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary Godfrey Wellingham who in the government chain of command was above both of Burnside’s bosses Director – General or “C,†and the Deputy Director of SIS. Wellingham had hopes Burnside and his daughter would reunite but also realized Neil had chosen his work over his marriage.
The first “C†of the series was Sir James Greenley, whose lack of spy experience left him naive at times about the reality of the world of SIS. Burnside would grow to respect him. Greenley trusted Neal’s judgment and experience even if he was horrified by the immorality of their actions. Greenley would retire due to health problems and was replaced by John Tower Gibbs, a long time opponent of Burnside.
The Deputy Director was Matthew Peele who served in intelligence during WWII, ambitious, clueless, and someone Burnside usually found easy to manipulate.
The confident and determined Burnside often went over the heads of his SIS bosses to use his ex-father-in-law influence, and he had no problem lying to all of them if it suited his vision of what was right and how to handle the problem.
The gratuitous sex, over the top violence, and absurdly complicated gadgets of James Bond was fiction in this world. This was a world where work in the field could be dull but was always dangerous. The turnover of Special Agents (field agents at SIS) was high during the series.
Due to the SIS small budget Burnside had only one to three Special Agents at a time. It takes a special person to become a SIS Special Agent, these were the agents who were assigned the dirty jobs no one else wanted or could handle.
Head of Special Section (Sandbagger One) was Willie Caine, a womanizing, working-class, ex-military with a strong moral code. Willie and Burnside respected each other but also had major disagreements over Burnside’s methods. Ray Lonnen (HARRY’S GAME, YELLOWTHREAD STREET) was able to make spy Willie Caine a sympathetic human living a life of loneliness but surviving because of his pride in his work.
The series featured believable characters, realistic dialog and plots that were cynical with dramatic twists that can sometime still surprise forty years later. The focus was less on the Russians and more on the self-interest power plays among the British government and its allies.
“Special Relationship” was the scheduled final episode for this fill-in TV series. It is arguably the best episode of the series and certainly the most important. The cast strongly objected to the story’s ending. However, the critics and public’s reaction lead Yorkshire TV to approve THE SANDBAGGERS for another series of six episodes. Shortly after that Yorkshire added seven more episodes and two weeks of location shooting at the luxurious Malta.
Roy Marsden commented on the reaction to the episode, saying, “When “Special Relationship” was shown, the response all over the country was staggering. Every radio program was taking about what had happened.â€
“Special Relationship” (October 30, 1978) Written by Ian Mackintosh. Directed by Michael Ferguson. Additional Cast: Diane Keen as Laura Dickens and Richard Vernon as Sir Greenley. *** Burnside and agent Laura Dickens have fallen in love. During an assignment in East Germany Laura is captured. Burnside searches for a possible prisoner in Allies hands to exchange for Laura. He finds one but there is a price.
Due to a labor strike that forced Yorkshire and ITV off the air for two months and the disappearance of Mackintosh, it would be fourteen months after the first series aired that THE SANDBAGGERS returned to the air. It had been decided to split the thirteen episodes up into two series. The second series aired six episodes from January 28 to March 3, 1980. The final seven episode third series aired from June 9 to July 28, 1980.
It was July 1979, six episodes for the second series had been filmed and Mackintosh had finished the scripts for all of the rest of the scheduled episodes but three. This is when the cast and crew headed off for two weeks of on location filming in Malta. David Cunliffe remained behind to run his other series for Yorkshire. Producer Michael Ferguson remained in London dealing with production work.
Ian decided to take a break. Mackintosh loved to travel, as did his girl friend of over two years Susan Insole. Mackintosh’s family and friends were used to him disappearing for a while and then suddenly reappearing. For this trip they had invited an old friend of Mackintosh British Airways pilot Graham Barber.
The trip would take them to the United States mainland and then to Hawaii and finally back to London by Alaska. They were flying over the Gulf of Alaska, an area of beautiful sights and an area of intense interest of both sides during the Cold War. The weather was clear and the waters calm when Graham Barber radioed an emergency call for help, “We are going down in the sea. I’m going to make for the very, very, small island just to the east of Shuyak Island.â€
The plane, a Rallye 235, and its three passengers were never found.
A lack of proof of death and Mackintosh’s long habit of disappearing and returning without warning put everything on an awkward hold. Reportedly the American state department held meetings discussing the possibility Mackintosh had defected to the Russian. Even today Ian’s brother Lawrie does not believe Ian died in the plane crash.
Series Two began with a less confident Neil Burnside who was more protective of his Special Agents. Below is the sixth and final episode of the second series and is a good sample of the characters and how Mackintosh’s SIS worked.
“Operation Kingmaker.” (March 3, 1980) Written by Ian Mackinston. Directed by Alan Grint. Additional Cast: Dennis Burgess as John Tower Gibbs and Elizabeth Bennett as Diana Lawler/ *** Burnside learns an enemy from his past John Gibbs may become the new “C.†Neil attempts to maneuver the system to install a boss he can control. His desperate choice is the ambitious idiot Matthew Peele, current Deputy Director.
Eventually Cunliffe could no longer wait for Ian’s return and with three episodes left that needed to be written, Cunliffe hired two writers to write the needed episodes. Gidley Wheeler (WARSHIP) wrote two episodes, MY NAME IS ANNA WISEMAN and WHO NEEDS ENEMIES. Arden Winch (WINGS) did SOMETIMES WE PLAY DIRTY TOO. All three were passable adventures but were too heavy-handed and lacked the style of Mackintosh.
Mackintosh had alreadyfinished the script for the last episode. Oddly enough for a man about to disappear, the episode ended in a cliffhanger. It is also one of Ian’s weakest scripts and suffers from believability issues.
“Opposite Number.” (July 28, 1980) Written by Ian Mackintosh. Directed by Peter Cregeen. Additional Cast: Michael Cashman as Mike Wallace and Sue Holderness as Marianne Straker *** Burnside has grown weary of the constant fighting within the system. As a long passionate opponent of the Salt talks (Strategic Arms Limitations) Neil decides destroying his career was a worthy price to pay if he can get the Russians to leave the talks.
The cliffhanger was not a surprise since Mackintosh expected a fourth series. Lonnen had signed for a fourth series. It is believed that Ian’s plans for series four had Willie promoted to Director of Operations and Burnside would become “C.†But without Ian Mackintosh the decision was made to end THE SANDBAGGERS. Cunliffe, Ferguson and Marsden moved on to do the series AIRLINE.
Some today wonder how popular THE SANDBAGGERS really was if so few who watched TV at the time remember it. Not having access to the ratings of 1978 or 1980 I suspect THE SANDBAGGERS critical acclaim had more to do with its success than number of people watching.
THE SANDBAGGERS did appear on American television in the late 1980s and inspired some enthusiastic fan clubs. It currently can be seen on streaming service BritBox.
On October 12, 2003 appearing in the New York Times was “TELEVISION; Spies Who Were Cool and Very Very Cold†by Terrence Rafferty. He wrote:
Whatever happened to Ian Mackintosh, Susan Insole and Graham Barber will most likely remain a mystery, but it left us all with a story worthy of an episode of THE SANDBAGGERS.
SOURCES:
THE LIFE AND MYSTEROUS DEATH OF IAN MACKINTOSH: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE SANDBAGGERS AND TELEVISION’S TOP SPY by Robert G. Folsom (Potomac Books, 2012).
Wikipedia
JOHN O’GROAT JOURNAL AND CAITHNESS COURIER (3/1/13) “Did Spy Writers Disappearance Mirror His Fiction?†by Calum Macleod
NY TIMES (10/12/03) “Television Spies Who Were Cool and Very Very Cold†by Terrence Rafferty
July 11th, 2018 at 8:48 pm
A good series, and the experience behind it showed in a more realistic view of the intelligence world than the usual Bondish antics or Le Carre nonsense. Burnside was a far more realistic representation of the men in the British Security Services than George Smiley despite Smiley being based on John Bingham (who loathed the character).
July 11th, 2018 at 9:58 pm
Thanks for this review, Michael, especially the video links. The complete series is available, but in UK format only. Individual series sets that can be watched without a multi-region player are available from Amazon, but the first series goes for $199.99.
Well, not to me, it doesn’t.
July 11th, 2018 at 10:09 pm
I had a problem with the links for the sources but if you search the John o’Groat …did spy writer’s disappearance Mirror his fiction you will find a photograph of Ian Mackintosh. Also Mackintosh was spelled sometimes with a small k and others with a capital K.
I think one of the reasons THE SANDBAGGERS are forgotten by most was TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY aired in American in 1979 and it got most of the attention. I agree David I found Burnside more believable than George Smiley and also John Drake (DANGER MAN)
My two favorite genres are the light mystery and the spy series. I have tried to watch every spy series I can find from SHADOW OF THE CLOAK to BERLIN STATION. THE SANDBAGGERS remind me of AMC’s RUBICON both made you believe in its reality.
I tend to enjoy the light of DEPARTMENT S or DELPHI BUREAU, but THE SANDBAGGER’s realism also appealed to me.
July 11th, 2018 at 10:14 pm
Steve, I recommend BritBox streaming service. Sign up for the free trail and you can watch the entire series there. Then you can cancel and never pay a dime. But I am willing to bet you will find enough great TV to watch there to justify the $6.99 a month fee.
July 11th, 2018 at 10:58 pm
Wow, what a selection! There’s more than I could watch there in a lifetime. It took me a while to find this series though. It’s filed under T, for The.
July 11th, 2018 at 10:44 pm
I saw this series on dvd 15 years ago and I still remember being shocked and surprised about the events at the end of season one. A very cynical and realistic look at the spy business.
Steve, go back and scroll down for better prices on the dvds at amazon.com. The complete set is available for $20.00 and the individual seasons are also available for more reasonable prices. The $199.00 is a special price for crazy people.
This review has made me want to watch the series again. I give it my highest recommendation. By the way it has 530 votes on IMDB and a 8.8 rating which is extremely high.
July 11th, 2018 at 11:02 pm
I’ll go check out Amazon again. I’m wondering, though, if I’ve already purchased one or more of the series sets. Going through boxes recently of uncatalogued DVDs I own, I’ve surprised myself more than once.
July 12th, 2018 at 5:43 am
Thanks for the great piece, Michael. I remember watching the series when it ran here some 30 (?) years ago, and liking it a lot. I’d pick up copies of the novelization whenever I saw it in England.
I see the British DVD of the complete set is available for $19.96, but if you can’t play Region 2 you might be out of luck.
July 12th, 2018 at 10:58 am
I hardly think Le Carre’s books are “nonsense”.
July 12th, 2018 at 1:51 pm
Walker and Jeff. It is amazing that those of us who have watched this series have not forgotten it.
It does make me wonder where does THE SANDBAGGERS belong on the list of greatest TV spies. With the range of spy fiction’s it is hard to do one list – which is better DEPARTMENT S or THE SANDBAGGERS?
My serious side has the best including THE SANDBAGGERS and RUBICON. TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (the TV mini-series) and DANGER MAN are brilliant but lacked the amount of realism and believability the first two have. Today there is some very good spy TV series out there including BERLIN STATION and COUNTERPART. But I still consider THE SANDBAGGERS and RUBICON the best of their type.
July 12th, 2018 at 2:05 pm
9. Rick Robinson, Le Carre’s spy fiction have a liberal point of view. He attacks the West for its morals or lack of morals. Ex-CIA head William Colby is not a fan and others believe like him Le Carre’s view was too harsh and misguided.
THE SANDBAGGERS and Ian Mackintosh (and Burnside) believed intelligence agencies should be left in the hands of the military and experienced agents. THE SANDBAGGERS believed that politicians and the public have no business in the what happens in the spy world and that the West openness give the East an unfair advantage.
Not to speak for Mackintosh but I suspect he would call Le Carre’s work nonsense as well.
July 12th, 2018 at 3:50 pm
michaels,
It isn’t Le Carre’s liberal bias I objected to, but his prejudice and frankly his often biased views (A MOST WANTED MAN, while a good novel and film, is a perfect example of Le Carre allowing his politics to so blind him he missed the very real threat of terrorism in Europe). I was involved with the British Security Services in the seventies in my role with the State Department and the relationship with them was nothing like the one Le Carre portrays nor were they populated with silly ass public schoolboys who talked like bad Wodehouse imitations as too much of Le Carre’s dialogue reads.
Le Carre was a low level operative who pretty much never did anything more challenging than running a Post Office drop. While I enjoy many of his novels, they are no more realistic than Ian Fleming (and at least Fleming was the real thing). The Le Carre effect, like the Fleming effect, is to give a patina of realism to sheer nonsense.
John Bingham, who was the model for Smiley and as important as the fictional Smiley in actual British intelligence, said in his opinion Smiley was the very model of the kind of men who regularly defected to the Soviets, and from my experience I would have to agree. Romantic patriots of the Bond type have a much better history than disaffected intellectuals with bad marriages.
You can’t get much more anti American or left wing than Graham Greene (his THE HUMAN FACTOR, which is highly critical of the British Security Services is also a bit of a thumb to the nose to Le Carre), but even he found much of Le Carre too fanciful for his taste including making up terms such as the Circus, Control, and “lamplighters” which were sometimes adopted ironically by the intelligence types who would have liked to have been Le Carre’s upper class schoolboys as compared to the Civil Service types they were.
My only objection to Le Carre is that he likes to pretend his nonsense is actually representative of the real world of intelligence when it is not. It is a dirty and often politically treacherous field, but you find precious few of Le Carre’s cliched schoolboy types involved compared to tough professionals. THE SANDBAGGERS reflected my actual experience, and I knew some of the colorful types from the War who were models for Bond, but the upper class schoolboys types were more often found in the Foreign Ministry than the Security Services.
July 12th, 2018 at 5:02 pm
David how familiar are you with Ian Mackintosh’s story? The book (see above sources) needed an editor as Folsom gets the facts right but he drifts between Ian’s life, the TV series, and history of spy fiction and can leave a reader confused about the timeline of events.
My opinion is Mackintosh was a mid-level spy while in the Royal Navy. After retiring from the Navy he continued in an unofficial role as he traveled all over the world. The MBE could have come from his work on TV series WARSHIP but no one else got one and the British government refuses to explain why Ian was rewarded with an MBE.
While he did some odd things before he left on his vacation such as asking his brother to look after his children and things if he didn’t come back, the cliffhanger and a certain series four tell me he expected to return.
This leaves two possible reasons for the plane crash. One, the Russians shot him down and he was captured or killed. With the end of the Cold War most of Russias secrets have been revealed and you would think we would know by now what happened to Ian and friends.
Reason two is the most likely. They crashed and died in the water (most likely as the Gulf of Alaska is a large area of water) or crashed on the very very small island and died there.
July 12th, 2018 at 5:51 pm
michaels,
Sad to say but the MacIntosh story is not an unusual one in intelligence where this kind of mysterious thing is more common than you might expect, the most famous cases being the still unexplained disappearance of Lionel Crabbe and why Rudolf Hess was held incommunicado until his death, or why he flew to England in the first place.
To this day we don’t know the exact facts around the death of Sidney Reilly in 1921 at the hands of Beria.
I could name a good dozen lesser known cases of this sort, some with sinister explanations and some mere coincidence, but in very few of them does any government come forward and reveal the truth — assuming they know enough of it to tell.
Where fiction differs from life is someone “knows” all the facts, but in real intelligence work plausible deniability works from top to bottom and is scrupulously guarded by all concerned.
It is entirely possible that if the Russian’s brought down the plane they meant to capture him and accidentally killed him or he killed himself when they meant to blackmail or shame the West in which case such a failure would be covered up, or it was an accident and they wanted to unnerve the West by letting them think they were responsible, or it just got buried under a ton of other such actions and no one ever really took enough responsibility to know exactly what happened.
The assumption that there is somewhere a single clear witness or report that would clear everything up is often a mistake made by outsiders expecting the intelligence field to be more organized than it is. The bodyguard of lies surrounding virtually every action taken in intelligence is extensive.
In MacIntosh case it is possible he was involved in a routine but indirect operation, the kind where an operative is asked to conduct a mission of some kind off the books and something goes wrong and nothing being on paper no one takes responsibility. Former assets are often asked to undertake such missions, which is likely the solution to the famous Crabbe case. A suggestion is made offhand, and action taken, something goes wrong, no one steps up to explain.
This lack of transparency over relatively trivial matters (trivial only in the sense of it seeming a minor thing to keep secret after all this time) is the very nature of the work where broad major operations may be discussed fairly openly and minor details guarded zealously. There are reasons, and I can speculate on them, but they are only speculations.
But say in MacIntosh case one of the KGB officers involved happened to be named Putin … I’m not suggesting that, merely pointing out it would be a typical reason why something so seemingly insignificant now might still be kept silent.
In any intelligence operation ass covering is a major consideration by all concerned. It is not a profession that values accepting responsibility or fall guys, especially when governments can sometimes hang on the most minor incidents, like the death of the writer of a popular television series that might engender questions in Commons or inspire the notorious British press to start speculating.
Obscurity is a far better defense in Intelligence than truth.
July 12th, 2018 at 6:20 pm
Thanks, David. Part of the appeal of THE SANDBAGGERS is the variety of issues that can be discussed about the series and writer.
Where does this series belong on the list of great TV spies?
What happened to Ian Mackintosh and friends?
July 15th, 2018 at 5:11 pm
I would rate SANDBAGGERS high along with MI5 (a similar series in many ways) simply because it dealt with not only the operations in the field, but at the ministerial level where policy is made and politics muddy the waters.
Perhaps the greatest failing of all fictional accounts of intelligence work is that having acquired the intelligence in fiction someone always acts on it. Any history of WW II will tell you getting the politicians and generals to listen to the intelligence was often more problem than gathering it in the first place.
The invasion of Italy is a perfect example, that bloody and costly campaign would have been over in days and Rome take in a week if the American general in charge had listened to the intelligence telling him the road to Rome was wide open and the Germans well north of the city. Instead he dawdled and downplayed the intelligence and costs thousands of Allied soldiers their lives.
It’s that ironic aspect of intelligence most series and episodes about spying and intelligence gathering miss, that and how many operations are about spinning wheels.
Similarly real intelligence operations can be exceedingly seedy involving blackmail, extortion, seduction, pimping, and less fashionable crimes. The Cold War in particular was most often fought by good men holding their noses and doing what was expedient to gather the intelligence they needed.
Action and glamour of the James Bond type do exist, but are few and far between accompanied by much seedier activities. Noel Behn’s THE KREMLIN LETTER is much closer to the reality of Cold War espionage than most of Le Carre, no one knows what the other fellow is doing and what they are doing is often dirty and not always productive.
I have been hard on Le Carre, but he is one of the best spy writers, and certainly the most serious. The Smiley books are all good, and I particularly enjoyed THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, THE LOOKING GLASS WAR, A SMALL TOWN IN GERMANY, OUR GAME, THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL, THE NIGHT MANAGER, THE CONSTANT GARDENER, OUR KIND IF TRAITOR, and even THE TAILOR OF PANAMA even if it is lifted whole cloth from Greene’s OUR MAN IN HAVANA with no attribution whatsoever.
But Le Carre is no more realistic than Fleming and had much less actual experience. Fleming never pretended Bond wasn’t tongue-in-cheek nonsense, that was the point. Le Carre wants to be taken for an insider and authority, and he simply gets too much wrong to be so (A MOST WANTED MAN). His spy novels, entertaining as most of them are, are about as realistic as Philo Vance or Charlie Chan when it comes down to it.
July 15th, 2018 at 9:13 pm
I always found the writing in SPOOKS (aka MI5) to be weaker than THE SANDBAGGERS. Even the three episodes others wrote filling in for Mackintosh lacked Ian’s touch. It is a shame his TV writing career was cut short.
How far we have come from THE SANDBAGGERS that shocked a country with the thought that the good guys can do bad things. Now we have series such as DEEP STATE where it is more shocking that anyone is a good guy.
One of Mackintosh questions was should we fear the intelligence community becoming the “invisible state” or should we welcome it. I wonder what Mackintosh would think of post-Cold War. A place where Salt was signed and ignored because both sides politicians (Congress never ratified it) used it for PR. We won the Cold War not because of a speech Reagan gave but that the Russians were lying to us about their economy – they were weaker not stronger than the West intelligence and Burnside believed.
THE SANDBAGGERS should be better remembered than other British fluff such as THE BARON, THE CHAMPIONS, etc (and I am a Dennis Spooner fan) but the American RUBICON should have gotten more attention than COVERT AFFAIRS.
People have always preferred the light drama over realism.