As the second episode of A Spy Among Friends begins, Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis) talks to Kim Philby (Guy Pearce) about The Admiral’s Glass by Southwark Bridge. Lily Thomas (Anna Maxwell Martin) listens to their conversation as Kim becomes concerned when he hears police sirens outside. Kim thinks they’re coming for him so he opens the door to ensure there will be witnesses, but they’re not there for him. Nicholas tells Kim that MI5 were champing at the bit to send their first 11 out there until C intervened with the Minister and insisted this was an intelligence matter. After all, Kim is an SIS man for whom there may still be a path to redemption. Nicholas warns him that he is accusing him of treason. He confirms that America has been told nothing. The sooner Kim tells him everything, the sooner they can take care of them and any others that might be out there.

Nicholas thinks he has thought about what the Russians might do to him if they find out he is blown. Robert Thomas (Gershwyn Eustache) comes into as Lily hears them talking about The Admiral’s Glass. After the intro, Nicholas goes to a restaurant to join several other men. At the office, Lily talks to Flora Solomon (Anastasia Hille) about the spies talking rings around each other. Sergei (Karel Roden) visits Kim to ask him to explain the game of cricket. He tells him they leave in 30 minutes. Lily tells Sir Roger Hollis (Adrian Edmondson) and Flora that Nicholas went for dinner at Philby’s flat on the last night he was there. Roger asks her to make her point as Arthur Martin (Rick Warden) joins them. Lily says Philby’s life was on the line and the meaning of Elliott’s life was on the line. She finds it difficult to believe he’d come back from Beirut empty-handed.

When Roger says he was supposed to come back with Philby, Lily suggests he came back with something better. She isn’t sure what it is yet, but she knows they won’t find the answer in an interrogation room. She thinks there is a man fighting for his life which is his career. Lily recommends taking him off the lead and following him from now on. Once Roger asks why she thinks she is the right person for that job, Flora says the SIS will never see her coming. Even if they do, they’re bound to underestimate her. Kim gets off the boat with Sergei. Lily makes contact with Nicholas when he is joking with colleagues. On a train, Katya talks to an older woman. Lily asks Nicholas if Kim was using the ambulance as a distraction, but Nick thinks he was genuinely concerned. He admits they can never be certain with a man like Kim. Sergei takes Kim to his cabin on the train.

Lily asks Nicholas what is so important about The Admiral’s Glass. He says it has to do with a minor personal matter. That is why he decided to let it go even though he knows what he was supposed to achieve in Beirut. He goes on to mention Aileen Philby who was Flora’s best friend. Nicholas says Flora called him out of the blue and asked him to drop by in the spring of 1941. She has something urgent and sensitive that she needed to discuss in person. When he visits, he finds that Aileen (Anna Andresen) is there waiting to see him too. Aileen blurts out that Kim is cheating on her. Flora tells him he can save them a great deal of time by sparing them the loyal friend act. They want him to find out who she is, but Nicholas doesn’t want to get involved. He tells them that this amounts to spying on his closest friend.

He begins following him. At the time, Nicholas didn’t think Kim knew that he was following him. Lily questions why he’d do all that when he considered it a betrayal. Nicholas tells her that he thought Aileen’s suspicions of an affair were more likely to be a misunderstanding caused by the type of work he did for SIS. He wanted to prove Aileen and Florida wrong. Lily reminds him that he could’ve told them anything and they would’ve taken his word for it. Nicholas suspects she is going to suggest he had other subconscious reasons to spy on him. She admits she believes he might’ve known something was going on with his friend. Nicholas follows Kim to a pub where he meets with a woman. Although he was worried Kim saw him, he tells Lily that he never said anything about it. In a flashback, Nicholas hangs out with Ian Fleming (Edward Baker-Duly) as a man tests out a new diving suit.

Kim joins them as Peter Tazelaar comes out of the water. Peter is going to use the suit to reach a German officers’ shindig at a seaside hotel. Kim asks Nicholas for a minute. In private, he tells Nicholas that he has been a fool and he thinks Aileen might be onto him. He goes on to say that her name is Alice Litzi and she is Austrian. Kim explains how he met her and helped her get out because she is Jewish. He shuffled some marriage papers and then she showed up in London all of a sudden. Nicholas reminds him that Aileen is about to have his baby so he knows exactly what to do. The story convinces Lily that Kim saw him at The Admiral’s Glass. Nicholas says he told him about Austria because he was probing to see what else he knew. They discuss the worker’s uprising in Vienna which Lily suggests was communist. Nicholas reminds her that fascism was the problem then and not communism.

At the time, they were at war with Germany and Kim happened to be one of the most effective espionage minds in that fight. Nicholas goes back to Flora and Aileen to tell them Kim is not cheating. Flora tells him that Aileen is six months pregnant so Kim must be brought to heel before it’s too late. Nicholas tells them that Kim is fighting for his country under some very difficult circumstances. He goes on to say Kim is not having an affair and would not do such a thing. Flora is asked to keep her nose out of other people’s business. Lily asks if Nicholas thinks Philby will be safe in the Soviet Union. She wonders if the British or CIA would get rid of him. She plays a recording of Nicholas asking Kim how long Flora knew he was a double agent. Nicholas doesn’t believe for a minute that she just realized he was a Soviet spy last week. Kim gets mad and slams his glass on the ground.

He denies being a traitor and claims Flora is lying. He also questions if Nicholas is accusing him of killing Aileen who was an alcoholic. Nicholas sees him as a man on the brink today. He knows Kim feels responsible for Aileen’s death after everything he put her through. He also believes that Kim is not a complete and utter monster. In the present, Lily asks Nick if he resents Flora since she knew about Philby going on 30 years. Nick says she knew he was a communist but not a spy. He thinks she would’ve kept quiet about his communist beliefs to protect her friend Aileen. Lily wonders how many people were killed by the Soviets based on the info they got from Philby. She thinks he would resent Flora for knowing for so long and saying nothing. Before they leave for lunch, she mentions that Flora introduced Philby to Aileen. Once she leaves, Lily uses a payphone to give the Commissionaire an address. She needs Ian in that house as soon as they can get him there.

Sergei asks Philby why he is communist. He admits there are several reasons beginning when he was a boy and witnessed his father’s rage at how the British betrayed the Arabs between the wars. Sergei says that is why he is mad at the British before again questioning why he is communist. At Cambridge, Kim had an economics professor who was profoundly offended by the predicament of the workers in the industrial north of England. Sergei asks about Vienna in 1934 and Litzi Friedmann. In a flashback, a woman is held at gunpoint by a man asking about his brother. She tells him that Manfred is busy. She claims she is a comrade and Manfred has been taken prisoner. He will be next because Manfred is his brother and important to the movement. Kim tells him he is a friend before he notices soldiers nearby. They eventually begin fleeing using the back stairs. The woman goes back with a bomb and blows herself up killing the soldiers.

Although Sergei thinks it started as a romantic adventure, Kim says it was the only way to fight fascism. In a flashback, he is surprised to see Litzi alive. When they have sex, she says this is their first time and not their last. On the train later, Kim learns that one of the passengers is the Directorate of Agriculture Inspector and the son of a military officer. Kim asks about the handmade shoes he is wearing from England. Sergei says they were a gift to his father from a British officer at the end of the war. Then, they begin talking about Konstantin Dmitrievich Volkov. Sergei claims not to know him. When the war against Germany was all but won, Kim says there were many from the Soviet Union who had succumbed to the temptations of the West. Volkov is one such person. He spent most of the war in Istanbul as the deputy chief of Soviet Intelligence in Turkey.

He wanted SIS to help him defect in exchange for a list of Soviet agents in Britain including an agent who had penetrated the uppermost echelons of the foreign intelligence service. Sergei suspects Volkov was talking about Kim. Two years before that when Nicholas Elliott was in Istanbul, he and Volkov crossed paths as allies against the Nazis. As a result, Volkov wanted Elliott to be summoned back to Istanbul to run his exfiltration. By that time, Kim had risen to head of Soviet counter Espionage in London so Volkov’s attempt was sent to him before it reached Elliott. Instead, Kim meets with Volkov (Radoslaw Kaim) and his wife so they can be dealt with. In the past, Nicholas joins Kim at the church for his son’s baptism. Listening devices are installed in Flora’s home. Sergei welcomes Kim to Moscow. Nicholas visits Flora at home while their conversation is recorded.

They begin talking about Kim as Nicholas admits they almost caught him in ’45 during the Volkov situation. Nicholas came to talk to her about the incident that happened four years earlier when she asked him to find out if Kim was cheating on Aileen. He suspects she was trying to steer him towards something other than adultery. Although Nick thinks otherwise, Flora insists she didn’t already know that he was KGB. They talk about how a lot of people flirted with communism in the past. She introduced Kim and Aileen to each other because she likes to believe the best in her friends. If she knew he was spying for Russia, she would’ve said something back then. Flora explains that Russia was technically their ally at the time. If he had found out, she thinks he could’ve helped. She admits she thought he could’ve changed Kim’s mind before it was too late. Flora didn’t want to blurt out accusations.

Nick begins believing that Litzi was his KGB cutout and not just his mistress. Flora wants to know what Kim said in Beirut and why Nick let him go. Kim told her that he is so dangerous because he is often far more switched on than he shows. She hopes he’ll tell her that he was always one step ahead of Kim. Nick leaves without saying anything significant. Sergei takes Kim to a flat where a woman calls him Comrade Colonel since that is his rank. He tells Kim that he will learn Russian. When asked if she is KGB, Sergei says she is a comrade and a friend. Lily asks Robert what is the matter, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. He eventually says it feels like they live in separate worlds sometimes. He says he loves her and doesn’t want to lose her. Lily confesses to taking her wedding ring off and putting it in the box that it came in when she gets to work.

She puts it back on as she rides home and loves putting it back on. It seems Litzi is spying on Kim from a distance. She gets into a vehicle to send a message before telling the driver they should move. James (Stephen Kunken) receives her message. Nick looks at his photo album and finds a picture of Volkov and his wife.

 

A Spy Among Friends Review

The second episode of A Spy Among Friends was better in certain ways, but the grueling pace remains a serious problem. The performances are good with Anastasia Hille, Guy Pearce, and Damian Lewis doing exceptionally well with their respective roles. It should be interesting to see how Kim Philby adjusts to living in Russia.

The story about Kim Philby and Nicholas Elliott is ultimately very intriguing although A Spy Among Friends hasn’t delivered any edge-of-your-seat excitement through two episodes. A tedious pace and clunky layout leave the episode feeling mentally cumbersome to the point that getting to the end is a struggle.

At times, the script lacks substance making it difficult to connect with any of the characters or even understand the impact of Philby’s betrayal. The second episode was mostly disappointing although the performances are great, the soundtrack adds excitement, and the outdoor scenery is excellent. It scores 5.5 out of 10. Recaps of A Spy Among Friends are available on Reel Mockery here.

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