The film version of Len Deighton’s “The Ipcress File,” released in 1965, isn’t exactly the kind of thing that feels like it could support six chapters of episodic television. Sure, the original went on to produce four sequels with the wonderfully droll Michael Caine, but the first film felt largely like a response to the dashing, action-heavy world created by Ian Fleming in the James Bond novels and films. While there’s an intriguing espionage plot, many of the film’s scenes center on bureaucracy, red tape, and the general stuffiness of a world that moves grown men around like pawns on a chessboard until it needs them to shape international politics. Let’s just say that the charm is in the delivery and not really the story, and it’s far more difficult for six episodes of television to rely on the former when there’s not much of the latter. Stars Joe Cole and Tom Hollander do their best to make AMC+’s version of “The Ipcress File,” premiering on May 19, into a stylish spy saga, and it’s interesting to see Lucy Boynton given a role that didn’t really exist in a source material that wasn’t exactly good to female characters, but the lack of urgency sometimes feels like it’s working against everyone involved, sometimes stuck between replicating the style of the ‘60s and appealing to an audience in the 2020s.
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While this version of “The Ipcress File” expands greatly on its sources in terms of narrative, the set-up is basically the same: an important scientific mind has been abducted. In this case, it’s one of the brains at the Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. As the Cold War is heating up in the ‘60s, the concern is that perhaps the Russians have taken someone who can teach them how to create their own nuclear device, forcing the spy world to get to the bottom of it and get their man in a white coat back on their side. It’s going to take a spy with connections and the kind of dodgy moral compass that makes it easier to go behind enemy lines. It’s going to take Harry Palmer.
The character made famous by Mr. Caine is introduced with a nod to the original film’s opening, which almost backfires given the shadow in which it places the show’s new star. It may seem unfair to compare but their resemblance, down to the choice of eyewear, makes it hard to ignore how much Mr. Cole is lacking when compared to Mr. Caine, who found a dry, detached tone to Palmer in the original that Cole seems to aim for but just miss. He seems to grow into the part in subsequent episodes but when he shoots for aloof in the first few chapters, he often hits half-asleep.
In the premiere’s opening scenes, Palmer is caught trading goods on the black market in Berlin in 1963. He is shuffled behind bars, and that’s where he’s recruited by Major Dalby (Hollander), head of something called WOOC(P) or War Office Operational Communications (Provisional). Dalby senses that Palmer has the aforementioned skill set to get this job done before the Russians gain ground in the nuclear arms race. The Dalby/Palmer dynamic still drives the plot, but the biggest difference between this and its sources is a greatly expanded role for Jean Courtney, played by the charismatic Boynton of “Sing Street” fame, especially when she works behind the scenes with a CIA Agent named Paul Maddox (Ashley Thomas). Boynton deftly adds a gender dynamic missing from the original in that this Jean is often the smartest spy in the room, even if the men around her just as often take her for granted. The always excellent character actor David Dencik (“Chernobyl”) shows up later as a Colonel on the Soviet side and adds some sly wit.
The story goes that Len Deighton was the original writer on a little film called “From Russia with Love,” the follow-up to “Dr. No,” but that the author was fired early in the production for not being on the same page as the producers. It’s funny to consider the success of “The Ipcress File” as a response to this experience, something that tears down the slick veneer of espionage to reveal the red tape that really holds the world together. And Caine completely understood that assignment in ways that Cole sometimes seems to miss, although it’s not entirely his fault. This version of “Ipcress” takes itself far more seriously, playing more like John Le Carre than Deighton, almost becoming the superficial spy story that it felt like the original novel and film sought to deconstruct.
Of course, it makes sense that “The Ipcress File” would undergo some rewrites over the last six decades. And there are elements of this ITV and AMC+ production that are undeniably charming. Boynton gives one of those refined performances that reminds one that she really should be a much bigger star while Hollander was made for this kind of stuffy suit that hides a deep moral conscience. If Cole sometimes drops the ball in the leading man department—part of the problem being that he looks very much like a boy in a man’s suit—Hollander and Boynton pick it up and keep the show moving down the field. It’s also worth noting that the show is just drenched in style, including wonderful production and costume design. It goes down as smoothly as Palmer’s whiskey.
AMC+ has been importing British productions since its inception, turning into a pretty solid streamer for Anglophiles. Anyone drawn to their version of “The Ipcress File” is likely to be satisfied enough by this harmless and reasonably entertaining remake, but they may wonder why this particular character keeps resurfacing in pop culture. After all, Harry Palmer is really just a cog in the great machine of international espionage. Even if he’s got more stylish specs than the one waiting to take his place. [B-]