Astonishing real-life tale

SECRET SERVICE: TEACHER TRIES TO RAISE ALARM ABOUT NAZIS AT COLLEGE German girls are taught discipline and sharpening their use of English.

Six Minutes to Midnight is a good, old-fashioned British spy thriller set in 1939 just before the outbreak of World War II. Written by its director Andy Goddard (Downton Abbey), and actors Eddie Izzard and Celyn Jones, this production is a stylish, well choreographed drama that unfolds with dramatic impact in Bexhill-on-Sea, a village on the south coast of England. This is an area where Izzard grew up and knows well and it is lovingly depicted through some evocative cinematography.

Izzard portrays an individual named Thomas Miller, who is sent to an Anglo-German private college by the British Secret Service to replace another agent posing as an English teacher.

The college is important to the Secret Service because among the students are daughters of the Nazi High Command. Here the girls are taught fitness, discipline and sharpening their use of English.

German sympathiser Ilse Keller (Carla Juri) schools them under the watchful eye of the headmistress, Miss Rochol (Judi Dench).

The element of mystery unfurls when Miller’s predecessor is found by one of the girls, washed up on the beach shortly after Miller’s arrival. Later, while reporting back to his contact person, Colonel Smith (David Schofield), Ilse shoots and kills the man. Miller is wrongly accused of the shooting, and is forced to go on the run. He needs to prove his innocence and, more significantly, inform them of the true nature of the college before he is captured by the authorities.

The tightly woven script builds a strong level of suspense during which time we meet Captain Drey (James DÁrcy), a well-spoken British Government official who knows more about the true function of the college than he is prepared to let on.

Veteran English actor Jim Broadbent plays the likeable Charlie, the village bus driver who helps Miller, and an ever reliable Judi Dench who is not given enough screen time as the headmistress.

Eddie Izzard, a familiar stage and TV figure in Britain, is highly effective as the agent desperately trying to stay alive in the days leading up to Britain’s declaration of war with Germany.

Six Minutes to Midnight is a highly enjoyable romp.