“London Spy,” the new mini-series that premiered in the United States on BBC America this week (it aired overseas in December), pushes the relatively staid medium of television crime drama forward while simultaneously holding back on pushing it too far. Ben Whishaw plays Danny, a fragile and lonely gay man who, when we’re introduced to him, is roaming the city streets, wandering into a club, and getting drunk. Looking to make a connection, any connection, he falls short and leaves alone.But after Danny meets the quietly beautiful Alex by chance, things shift. As their relationship grows, Danny reveals his past struggles with drugs and general destructive behavior, and feels comfortable enough to introduce Alex to his friend Scottie (Jim Broadbent), who picks at his friend’s new lover during a night of drinking, testing his boundaries. Alex, who is buttoned up in every way that Danny is impetuous, doesn’t seem to flinch under the pressure. They are the ideal pair representing the idea of opposites attract, and the two settle into a mundane, quiet life — walks on the beach, cooking at home, great sex. But one morning, after discussing plans to go away for the weekend, Alex casually mentions that, before leaving, he has to go back to his apartment to replace his laptop battery. When he walks out the door, he never returns.It turns out that Alex is a spy, and almost nothing he told Danny about his life was true, even his name. This all happens in the first episode, and the rest of the series plays out as an investigation of Alex’s disappearance and the unraveling of a shadow world involving British intelligence agencies, genius math professors, and years of plotting and scheming. Danny, attempting to discover the truth, finds himself thrown into a story that was unraveling before he pushed himself into its narrative and will continue to play out long after he disappears.Aside from the obvious (casting, setting), there is something very British about “London Spy” that’s related to its construction and the genre itself, akin to ITV’s “Broadchurch” and the BBC’s “Luther.” It’s a cold, rainy show, and its tone is melancholic rather than tense. This is a love story first and foremost, and a sad one at that — it puts little emphasis on puzzling twists and turns and shocking reveals. Its relatively short run of six episodes means it has less time to expand on anything other than the main story, which always works well for crime drama. We don’t need a whole episode dedicated to a subplot involving a minor character. That works in some cases, but typically takes away from the main focus of a show of this nature, which is plot, plot, and more plot. “London Spy,” to its credit, never stops moving.It’s hard to imagine an American show taking this route. Compare “London Spy” to something like “The Killing” or “True Detective,” and the cultural differences become more obvious. American television drama likes to escalate, pushing tension further and further — there is an element of one-upmanship, attempts to reach an audience by going beyond the limits of an earlier show — while at the same time clinging to “character development,” which slows things down.“London Spy” has emotional moments, to be sure, but the actors show emotions that are mixed and complicated, and are not clamped down by the pressures of making it easy for an audience. There is also the fact that an American show would have made more of the relationship between two men, and also the question of whether a mainstream American network would have even dared to air a show focused on two gay men in the first place. “London Spy” accepts it as no big deal and moves on.If there is any precursor to “London Spy,” it would definitely be “Prime Suspect,” the British multi-season mini-series starring Helen Mirren, and everything that came in its wake (too many to name). The formula these shows take on has become its own genre at this point. “London Spy” stops short of being anything truly new, but it’s a really good version of a thing we’ve seen many really good versions of. That’s enough to watch, but not enough to shower with praise.
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