Why No One Watched 'A Spy Among Friends' (And Why You Should)

Geek Vibes Nation

13-05-2025

The 2023 British miniseries A Spy Among Friends went lost in the shuffle stateside thanks to crowded, bottom-barrel Epix and MGM+ streaming obscurity. Fortunately, this six-hour series is steeped in clever espionage and gravitas.
Unfortunately, however, A Spy Among Friends doesn't make it easy on audiences in its first two episodes as director Nick Murphy (FX's A Christmas Carol) and writer Alexander Cary (Homeland) adapt the historical book by Ben Macintyre (Operation Mincemeat) with unnecessary busyness, back and forth flashbacks, and interrogations within interrogations. Viewers are expected to know about our Cambridge spy Kim Philby (Guy Pearce), his decades-long friendship with Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis), their cat and mouse betrayals, and the subsequent defections to Russia that shook the British Intelligence Services from top to bottom.
This convoluted structure interferes with the potentially intriguing characterizations, for we're dumped right into the action without really being endeared to our spies. Obviously, A Spy Among Friends is probably not in chronological order because that would have involved even more de-aging special effects and make-up on the leads as we follow the titular pals from World War II into the 1960s. However, it may have been easier to simply trust the audience to overlook age rather than confusing viewers with who is who, doing what, and when, as if this were Clue.
An opening episode meeting our boys during the War would have established their communist versus the Crown allegiances and relationships before a second hour dedicated entirely to their one-on-one fallout in Beirut, which is instead excellent twofer scenes broken up throughout the series. Who has duped whom in the boys-will-be-boys club amid the affairs and hidden handlers? A third episode introducing Anna Maxwell Martin as the composite agent Lily Thomas ruffling all the stiff-upper-lip feathers in her mission to grill Elliott on Philby regarding who has betrayed Britain and when would have laid out all the 'whither tos' and 'why fors' for the audience.
But alas, A Spy Among Friends adheres a bit too closely to the cloak and dagger, deliberate and slight of hand confusion in its first half. A Spy Among Friends should probably be watched at least twice for full effect, but viewers made dumb by the trying-to-be-clever structure would most likely tune out by the second episode. The out-of-order piecemeal isn't trying to tell the whole decades' worth of this history, but the fictionalized plots and historical liberties may send the viewer towards other books and adaptations instead. It's also perhaps difficult now not to have current politics on the back of our mind while watching A Spy Among Friends.
Unofficial American counterintelligence agents are excited to have defecting British double agents embedding disinformation in the KGB for the CIA, and the audience almost has to look up who is who. Episode Four 'Vodka' intercuts the action in London and the espionage in Moscow as concurrent, deflating intriguing ruses and fatal suspense that should have been told as uninterrupted acts. Fortunately, A Spy Among Friends improves once it settles down and reduces the interwoven flashbacks, allowing superb performances to play out in conversations laced with international details. Conflicting friendships and romances intersect, yet they look the other way at what the Secret Intelligence Service does. Jealous wives who also did their intelligence part during the War think it's over, never fully knowing the complex husbands who still think spying is fun.
Maxwell Martin's original but historically based Lily is quietly tough in the man's espionage world, yet doing her best to be softer at home. She's not posh like the rest and told to wear lipstick so she doesn't look tired and get taken off the case. Sadly, though, one might wonder if Lily needs to be here when Lewis's Elliott plays the near-feminine lead a la the jilted lover. The bittersweet Elliott imagines Philby singing, and his rose colored hero worship of Philby is a vicarious obsession that didn't need an outside interrogation driving the realization of Philby's duality. Philby's mother says Elliott knows him best, and Lewis' excellent stiff-upper-lip, jolly-good, sharply contrasts with what most Americans may know of him on Homeland .
It's also fascinating that Pearce (The Brutalist) was the second choice, replacing Dominic West after COVID delays on The Crown while putting on a remarkable Cambridge ego matching Lewis' Old Etonian acuity. Suave, charismatic flashbacks of Philby contrast his bitter Moscow frigid, hospital letters, and meager drunkard reduction. Our spies thought a different set of rules applied to them as they secretly spread disinformation for their country, but Philby's laughing reflections and judgmental visions of Elliott in the last two episodes seal the fatal consequences.
Although the modern gradient is dark and dreary rather than the colorful essence of the era; the mid-century mood is laden with period airs, graces, and jolly good elitism thanks to classic automobiles, fedoras, cigarettes, and pipes. The de-aging in past scenes is brief – one wonders why they didn't just make our actors look older later instead – but ironically it's the smoking that seems slightly fake. The cast has the right cigarette mannerisms and intermingled nuances, yet the smoke itself seems digitally added and bemusingly noticeable.
The penultimate episode 'Snow' lets the audience experience the bitter build-up as the vodka takes hold of the superb performances and sleight of hand espionage at the expense of self. The stars go head to head with disguised clues and duped semantics, tempting one to blink first. The over the barrel, who's trying to outwit whom tension is felt as the pip pip cheerio comes to blows. A Spy Among Friends can actually be pretty entertaining when the drunken secrets are casually dismissed as dinner party banter for the simple-minded and pompous spectators. Viewers may even admire the clever literary quotes and opera citations they use as Elliott realizes he doesn't know whom to trust, and Philby accepts his turncoat bitterness. Interplay with cricket scores, bluffing, dirty limericks, and word salad misdirection make for an intense three minutes of who told what and when betrayal after thirty years of loyalty. Mistakes realized decades later lead to government suspicion and destabilized agencies that, unfortunately, feel quite modern, and our spies can neither walk away nor live with what they've done.
A Spy Among Friends is slow to start with out-of-order storytelling that will be frustrating to some viewers. However, period atmosphere and fine performances make this slightly obscure miniseries worth seeking.
A Spy Among Friends is currently available to stream on MGM+.