SPY/MASTER

BBC Four, 9pm & 9.50pm

Espionage dramas just haven’t been the same (with the possible exception of Mick Herron’s splendidly adapted Apple TV+ series Slow Horses) since the collapse of the Soviet Union. So it is a particular joy to slip into the bleak, spycraft-packed, Cold War-era embrace of this atmospheric HBO series set at the heart of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Iron Curtain intelligence network in the late 1970s.

Alec Secăreanu plays the role of Ceaușescu’s most trusted spook-cumforeign-affairs-advisor Victor Godeanu to perfection, embodying a politically deft security chief weighed down by multiple divided loyalties and threats from all sides. His inscrutableness is key to how tonight’s opening episodes (of six) play out as, with mounting tension, we come to appreciate the overwhelming paranoia of the world in which he lives and – with the KGB, Stasi and CIA all also eager to get a piece of him – just how much he needs to escape it. A great supporting cast, spot-on costume design and terrific location work (with various bits of Romania and Hungary standing in for 1970s Belgrade, Berlin, Vienna, Bonn and Camp David) help to keep the suspense levels sky high. Gerard O’Donovan hots up, the remaining applicants compete to drive a hard bargain at the local livestock market. They also get to prove their conservation chops on a wetland restoration project and, most importantly, outline their business plans to the Trust’s estate managers, as well as host Matt Baker.

Parker Sawyers and Alec Secăreanu star in the drama