Harry Palmer returns

CraigMooreOHMSS

Denbigh wrote: »

I was concerned about ITV's production value.

It does have a very flat look. And the cheap looking muzzle flashes were disappointing.

delfloria

Well, he is certainly channeling Caine in this portrayal. Really lack luster without "A Man Alone" and the extreme camera angles associated with TIF.

Dragonpol

Looks like it's going to be more faithful to the book than the film version was. Not sure about Palmer with designer stubble. I'll reserve judgement until I watch the series in full though.

AKillToAView

Reserving judgement until the first proper trailer as this seems to have been ripped from a promo during TV airing with a not very good sound mix and poor video quality.

That being said, it also wouldn't shock me, given that ITV are not exactly known for visual spectaculars or high budgets.

On the other hand, the people at that screening did seem to be very positive about the quality of the first episode so, who knows?

mtm

Yes I think it’s a not very nicely put together trail (with horrible music) which doesn’t really tell much about the show itself.

AKillToAView

Music financier Cutting Edge Media Music has invested in ITV’s adaptation of Len Deighton’s The Ipcress File and will take full music rights to the upcoming series. Altitude Television’s big-budget six-parter has already pre-sold to AMC+ and producer Andy Mayson said “Cutting Edge’s involvement and expertise has ensured the authentic sounds of the 60s feature.”

https://deadline.com/2022/01/music-financier-invests-in-itvs-the-ipcress-file-masked-singer-uk-indie-bandicoot-in-triple-hire-global-briefs-1234917294/

delfloria

If it was more faithful to the book, he would not be named Harry Palmer. I'm not judging the series, just the poorly made trailer.

zebrafish

It has an MGB zipping past other classic cars - excellent!

mtm

delfloria wrote: »

If it was more faithful to the book, he would not be named Harry Palmer.

They're not mutually exclusive: you can be more faithful to the book than the film was and yet still use original stuff from the film.

Like how the movie of Casino Royale is more faithful to Fleming than Moonraker is, but it's still got Judi Dench's M in it.

delfloria wrote: »

Well, he is certainly channeling Caine in this portrayal. Really lack luster without "A Man Alone" and the extreme camera angles associated with TIF.

Actually I just watched it again and noticed that almost every shot is a Dutch angle.

delfloria

mtm wrote: »

delfloria wrote: »

If it was more faithful to the book, he would not be named Harry Palmer.

They're not mutually exclusive: you can be more faithful to the book than the film was and yet still use original stuff from the film.

True.

Like how the movie of Casino Royale is more faithful to Fleming than Moonraker is, but it's still got Judi Dench's M in it.

It is.............. just joking.

delfloria wrote: »

Well, he is certainly channeling Caine in this portrayal. Really lack luster without "A Man Alone" and the extreme camera angles associated with TIF.

Actually I just watched it again and noticed that almost every shot is a Dutch angle.

Agreed. There are a LOT dutch angle camera angles throughout the trailer but there seems to be something missing. Perhaps it's the lack of intriguing compositions and foreground elements.

Now, regarding the music, I'd love for them to reference Barry's work but I know that I am imposing my own needs over the series needs or the filmmakers choices.

I'm really looking forward to this regardless of the choices. Now if somebody would just do Matt Helm properly.

mtm

Bearing in mind how closely he resembles Caine's Palmer (and is called Palmer!) I did think there's a chance of them using A Man Alone, but I expect it's probably more than expensive than it's worth to use it.

As regards the camera angles: to be honest I always find the camerawork in the original Ipcress to be a bit irritating and showy. I get the idea: it's supposed to be that we're spying on Harry, but it's just a bit tiring after a while. Give me Funeral or Billion Dollar any day (Billion especially actually looks rather lovely).

M_Balje

Trailer on Youtube



I liked Man from Uncle movie from 2015 enough that i wish there making a sequel, whyle i don't like trailer. The trailer from this look a bit nerves, what fit with idea there whant to make something on dificult level of earlier movie or something like Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy.

mtm

Thanks for the YouTube version M_Balje
I think the Tinker Tailor link is a fair one, I can imagine they looked at that film a fair bit. I wish the ITV trailer people hadn't just picked the first bit of stock music they found though.

AKillToAView

Yeah, I think the music and the sound mix are the things really letting this down, things like the ungfire would probably seem a lot better if they weren't so oddly muffled.

Apart from the trailer just being a bunch of clips and out context audio and not really a good indication of the show.

AKillToAView

Someone leaked a longer (and slightly improved) trailer for the show. It's since been taken down, but here is a backup. Sorry for the poor quality.

mtm

Thanks, that is a better trailer.

AKillToAView

mtm wrote: »

Thanks, that is a better trailer.

I agree. I don't know what they were thinking when they made and released that trailer.

One interesting change, judging from the trailer, is that Palmer is no longer captured and held in 'Albania' (as per the film) or 'Hungary' (as per the book) but instead, China.

:Edit: Found this very detailed preview of the first episode. I've included the highlights below. Sounds like a very interesting mix of the film and book version.

ITV’s remake of this classic 60s spy drama is loaded with glitz and glamour in the West, juxtaposed with the grim austerity of Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain. It looks like no expense has been spared for this six-part series and the initial impression is sexy, witty and dangerous.

The year is 1963 and The IPCRESS File gets underway in Berlin, a city brutally divided by the Wall. For spies it’s the new battleground and for the black market it’s a boon – just don’t get caught. Corporal Harry Palmer (Joe Cole) is bored with life in the British Army and the occupied city offers a wealth of opportunity for a smart man who thinks the rules don’t apply to him. Harry has a lucrative sideline, a black market operation lifting American army supplies and selling them, via a local German contact with a dodgy war record, to the Russians. The Soviet generals, and their girlfriends, love a lobster.

Harry’s latest batch of cigarettes and whiskey is about to net him a decent profit but the military police crash the party. He runs and thinks he’s got away but the MPs are waiting for him at his flat. Next stop the glass house en route to Colchester Military Prison. The judge doesn’t like the cut of Harry’s jib, or maybe it’s his mouth that gets him into trouble, anyway he throws the book at him. Nine years.

While Harry repents, or not, at her majesty’s pleasure a nuclear physicist has made a breakthrough with the next generation neutron bomb. The world is less safe but it’s a significant discovery for Britain, making the country a player on the world stage once again. Any joy the Brits derive from this triumph is short lived, though. In an audacious and meticulously planned operation, Professor Peter Dawson is kidnapped. The man is now a vital cog in national security and must be retrieved at all costs, even if that means buying him back from the kidnapper before he’s spirited away and sold to the enemy.

Major Dalby’s (Tom Hollander) clandestine unit, War Office Operational Communications, is perfect for the job. A discreet enclave of the Secret Intelligence Service, Dalby’s unit is free from Treasury scrutiny and oversight, reporting directly to the minister. The kidnapping was expertly carried out, but they do have a lead. The man in charge has a missing finger and as there are few players on the scene capable of mounting this kind operation, Polish national, Jan Pilsudski, fits the description and is top of the suspect list.

Pilsudski’s codename is Housemartin and Dalby wants to contact him, pay the ransom and get Professor Dawson back. If it can be done under the noses of the Russians, while keeping everything off the American radar, that will be a feather in Dalby’s cap. Dalby went to the right kind of school and is steeped in the British establishment so he grudgingly acknowledges they need help from a convict, but Harry Palmer is the only one with a link to Housemartin – the man who procured the lobsters Harry sold to the Russians. But this is different fish…

So Dalby has to go cap in hand to Prisoner 17315 Palmer promising to get his sentence reviewed in return for his help. The only way this works for Palmer is if he returns to Berlin to deal directly with Housemartin. Dalby knows Palmer will abscond the first chance he gets, so he has a few tricks up his sleeve to keep him in line. Even so Palmer knows Housemartin is more likely to slit his throat than play ball but an exchange is agreed. Only the operation goes badly wrong. This early action flits between the UK and Germany but that’s just the beginning, and The IPCRESS File plays out as a globetrotting action drama with no less than the fate of the world in the balance. Murder, double cross and mayhem ensue.

https://crimefictionlover.com/2022/02/the-ipcress-file-reimagined-on-itv/

mtm

I think that sounds good, I hope it is.

Is Ross not in it?

Venutius

Much improved trailer, great synopsis. Fingers crossed.

AKillToAView

Another interesting preview for the show.

ITV’s ambitious, all-star, six-part reframing of spy story The Ipcress File is a total treat, says Caroline Frost.

West Berlin, 1963. A young man picks up a familiar-­looking pair of glasses from his bedside table to look at a beautiful woman taking a bath. Soon after, he picks up a newspaper, pausing to draw a moustache on a picture of President de Gaulle. The detail is rich, evocative and clear evidence of ITV’s determination that its engrossing new big-budget six-parter, The Ipcress File will both pay respectful tribute to the acclaimed 1965 film, but also find a fresh audience on its own merits.

For writer John Hodge (Trainspotting, The Beach, The Program), the appeal and also the challenge lay in adapting Deighton’s first-person novel and broadening his canvas across six television hours. He wondered: “Where can we take this? How do we broaden it out and look into other characters’ lives for more of an ensemble piece?” The answer, it seems, is in Deighton’s great wit and warmth. “Spy stories can be grim,” says Hodge, “but a feeling of humanity permeates his work. In the small moments, there is human weakness, human strength.”

Key to the success of the whole enterprise (produced by Altitude Television in association with ITV Studios) is the casting of Harry Palmer, a man Watkins describes as “a winner who comes across as a loser”. He adds: “He’s a man aware that the whole world is skewed against him, and he uses humour as a weapon.”

Alongside Cole in the early scenes where he is introduced to his new world of espionage, is Tom Hollander, on enigmatic form as section head Major Dalby. The pair’s chemistry is electric, bringing out the unlikely similarity of two such characters, despite their utterly different backgrounds. Hollander reflects: “They each have an ironic relationship to their own predicament. They’re class enemies but they’re actually dancing on the same pinhead, both restricted by their job and the world they’re in.”

With so many battles, both personal and political, taking place, Hodge has much to feast on. “It’s a fascinating era,” the writer agrees. “A time of social mobility; sex had just been invented in Britain, according to Philip Larkin, and we were about to enter an era of four prime ministers who had all been to state schools. There was a sense of society opening up, but there was also the threat of nuclear annihilation. Lots of things to work with.”

Indeed, a whole series suddenly doesn’t seem so long, after all. The adaptation also takes the characters abroad to Finland, the US and Lebanon – in contrast to the film, which stayed firmly in London.

The show is palpably epic, though, both in style and structure, on a par with Watkins’ previous projects. As well as McMafia, he directed The Woman in Black for the big screen and an episode of Black Mirror. He waxes lyrical about the production design of The Ipcress File, everything from the bleached colour palette to the roughness of the woollen clothes. “We were trying to keep a dirtiness to it,” he says. “You’re looking at everything askew, the horizon line is always shifting. The off-kilter angles have a Third Man influence. It’s all contributing to a sense of things not being quite as they should be.”

For Kevin Lygo, ITV’s Managing Director of media and entertainment, Hodge’s adaptation, plus the idea of Joe Cole in the lead role, made Ipcress a very attractive proposition. “The script was so good, it leapt off the page,” he says. “It was a terribly easy commission. The budget was going to be an issue because it had such ambition – we are not Netflix, so that was where other partners came in.”

In addition to ITV Studios, other backers include the Liverpool Film Office, Lipsync, Filmgate and the Finnish national and regional film funds.

This begs the question of how best to market a show that looks so much bigger than your average ITV drama. Lygo accepts that he has a big task ahead: “It’s incumbent on us to market it slightly differently. It’s not a standard ITV show. It needs a special event.”

He groans at the inevitable compliment that The Ipcress File looks so good that it must surely be the next big-budget offering from a deep-pocketed streamer. “People say it looks like a big Netflix thing, which is incredibly annoying,” he admits. “But I do know what they mean.”

https://rts.org.uk/article/ipcress-file-sixties-thriller-today

mtm

Is that the first time we've heard it will screen in March?

Dragonpol

mtm wrote: »

Is that the first time we've heard it will screen in March?

I believe that it says at the end of the trails that are currently being shown on ITV at the minute that it's "Coming this March".

mtm

Cool, thanks.

Dragonpol

mtm wrote: »

Cool, thanks.

No bother. I don't tend to watch ITV as much as the BBC but I've seen it on a few times now over the past few weeks.

Risico007

when will it be on BBC?

mtm

Never, probably! :) Unless BBC America have bought it in the States.

Dragonpol

mtm wrote: »

Never, probably! :) Unless BBC America have bought it in the States.

Yes, I can't see it. ITV and the BBC are very much rival broadcasters here in the UK and this is an ITV produced show so they won't be sharing it. It's possible they'll export it to the US as one of their foreign sales packages but I doubt that BBC America will get a look in!

mtm

I think BBC America do show ITV and Channel 4 shows.

Dragonpol

mtm wrote: »

I think BBC America do show ITV and Channel 4 shows.

Ah, well there you are then. Hopefully our US members will get a chance to see it as well then.

LucknFate

I want to like the Palmer casting a lot, but both trailers make me worried Joe Cole plays it too "cool" and understated. There are almost no shots of him talking, and in the shots he does his mouth hardly moves. I think it's a performance that probably plays out over a scene, and these "sexy" trailers are suited to display it. Looks interesting; if I can find it in the US I'll watch it.