Band of Spies, a new series currently streaming on Yes VOD, dramatizes the massacre of Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and the Mossad’s hunt for those responsible for the attack. These events were portrayed from different perspectives in Steven Spielberg’s Munich, 20 years ago, and last year in September 5.
The series was created by Amir Mann, best known as a writer for Fauda, and it gets the Fauda treatment, following both sides, the Black September terrorists and the Mossad agents. The international espionage series was produced by Paramount’s Ananey Studios and Archery Pictures, and was directed by Lawrence Gough and Bálint Szentgyorgyi.
In the first episode, the only one released so far to the press, Dror Keren portrays Mossad head Zvi Zamir. He flies to Munich with his translator as soon as the Israeli government hears the news of the attack, in which two of the Olympic delegation were initially killed; the remaining nine perished later.
September 5 focused on the American sports journalists covering the attack, but here we see it from Zamir’s point of view as he tries to avert a disaster, coming up against the intransigence of the Germans who refused to let Israel attempt a rescue. As is well known, the Germans botched their own mission in several ways. You can only watch in horror as the Israelis are executed while various troops were stuck in traffic, or bungled the job through sloppy planning. It’s not easy to watch.
Subsequent episodes will show how Zamir grapples with difficult questions posed by the hunt for the terrorists, navigating between the hardline tactics of veteran Mossad agent Mike Harari (Roi Miller), who sets off with his team to conduct the mission, and the political demands of prime minister Golda Meir (Delia Meyer).
On the Palestinian side, PLO leader Abu Iyad (Hisham Suliman) struggles to control Ali Hassan Salameh (Amir Boutrous), the reckless Black September commander.
The cast includes such well-known actors as Maor Schwietzer, Loai Nofi, Ohad Knoller, Oz Zehavi, and Yaakov Zada-Daniel. The story of the hunt for these terrorists has been covered so extensively in documentaries and in Munich that it’s going to be a challenge for the creators to come up with new angles in the upcoming episodes.
Slow Horses
BAND OF SPIES is just one of several spy/action dramas with suspenseful, twisty plots coming up this week. Apple TV+ just released the first episode of the fifth season of Slow Horses – the series about a group of misfit MI5 agents led by the supremely disgusting, alcoholic, arrogant, and very funny Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) – and it starts with a jolt.
A gunman massacres innocent civilians in London in what seems at first like a random attack. Around the same time, the most arrogant IT guy/cyber spy in history, Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung), almost gets run over as he’s dancing around, listening to music on his way to work. As if that weren’t suspicious enough, Ho has a real-life girlfriend, not a chatbot like his previous relationships, and she’s a French knockout named Tara (Hiba Bennani).
Shirley (Aimee Ffion-Edwards), a Slow Horses agent struggling with her cocaine addiction and PTSD, has a hunch the shooting and the attack on Ho are connected, but of course, no one will listen to her. They are busy preparing the farewell party for Louisa (Rosalind Eleazar), arguably the most normal person in the Slow Horses’ rundown office, who is taking a leave of absence to restore her mental health, something they all could use.
River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), still reeling from the discovery of his true father last season and having to put his grandfather (Jonathan Pryce), once the feared head of MI5, who is now demented, in a care home, is going to miss Louisa most of all.
Also on hand are the incomparably weird JK Coe (Tom Brooke) and the recovering alcoholic secretary (Saskia Reeves), who is the perfect foil for Lamb. Lamb also needles Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas), the brilliant second-in-command of the spy organization. She continues to scramble to cover up for her vain, bumbling boss, Claude (James Callis).
The story is set against the backdrop of a mayoral election in London, where the current mayor (Nick Mohammed of Ted Lasso), who is from an immigrant family, is a liberal given to bland pronouncements about making the city “Londerful” again.
His opponent is a racist, anti-immigration candidate, who may be behind the gunman’s shooting spree. The sense that the two candidates are equally vapid permeates the series, since the characters are cynical about everything.
Like every season, the setup is fascinating and the payoff slightly contrived, but don’t let that spoil your fun. I can’t write more about the plot at this point – Apple doesn’t like spoilers – but I can say that I was given access to the full season and I binged on it in record time – the real test of how good a series is.
Mobland
MOBLAND, ANOTHER drama series with serious star power, is now on Hot VOD and Yes VOD and starts running on Hot Drama on September 29 at 10 p.m. It’s about an Irish crime family that controls a big part of London’s drug trade. The head of the family is Conrad Harrigan (Pierce Brosnan), but as powerful and ruthless as he is, the coldest and most calculating member of the clan is his wife, Maeve (Helen Mirren).
Conrad spends his time at their gorgeous Cotswold estate fly fishing; Maeve spends hers plotting how they will challenge another crime family for dominance of the fentanyl trade. They are helped by their son Kevin (Paddy Considine), but even more by Harry (Tom Hardy), the friend Kevin made in a juvenile prison, who has become like an adopted son to Conrad, and who is the family’s fixer.
The series revels in the larger-than-life evil of Conrad and Maeve, who are almost like Dynasty characters, while Harry is closer to Tony Soprano, a slightly befuddled guy who is ready for anything.
Harry’s wife, Jan (Joanna Frogatt), is a discontented but very rich housewife with a spectacular London apartment, who frequents wine bars and nags Harry to come to couples counseling. Harry also brought to mind Ray Donovan, the titular character of that series, who tried to make sure his wife and kids had a normal, upper-class life, while he was out beating people up and blackmailing them.
The plot gets going when Kevin’s son, Eddie (Anson Boon), a spoiled brat who does a lot of cocaine in clubs, is out with the son of the leader of a rival crime family. When this other boy disappears, it seems that a war is looming, and Harry does his best to cool passions all around.
However, that’s just the starting point for a plot that involves a lot of violent retribution, and you never know whether any character is going to make it alive to the end of a scene. At times, it lingers on the details of violence in ways that are unpleasant, but it’s inventive enough that I kept tuning in to see more of it.
Brosnan is a little bland, as he can be, but Helen Mirren, who was fresh from portraying Golda Meir in Guy Nattiv’s film Golda, steals the show with her evil glee.