Toffs, Queers and Traitors: The Extraordinary Life of Guy Burgess – Storyville

BBC FOUR, 9.00PM

“There is something odd about anyone who betrays their country,” says filmmaker George Carey in this thorough look at the turbulent life of infamous defector Guy Burgess. It’s a life that seems to have sprung straight from the pages of fiction with the louche Burgess, a very Simon Raven-like gentleman cad. Exile in the Soviet Union didn’t suit him, but he refused to recant his beliefs even to the bitter, lonely end. Ultimately, we are given the sense of a man who felt at odds wherever he was: a great seducer who was always alone.