MY NAME ISN'T MICHAEL CAINE

Harry Palmer’s back in a remake of the 1960s spy classic – but this time he’s played by a Peaky Blinder

PICK OF THE WEEK

THE IPCRESS FILE Sunday, ITV, 9pm

It’s welcome back to the anti-James Bond: Harry Palmer, an unashamedly working-class secret agent with a distinctive brand of cool who relishes using brains rather than brawn in the 1960s spy game. Yes, the hero created by Len Deighton and immortalised in the 1965 movie The Ipcress File and sequels by Michael Caine now comes to the small screen in a stylish six-part adaptation.

Coming along just as the world is reeling in shock after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this adaptation takes us back to a very different era, when the Cold War was stopped from escalating by an army of spies working in secret to hold us all back from the nuclear brink.

Joe Cole (Peaky Blinders, left) stars as Palmer, while scriptwriter John Hodge (Trainspotting, Shallow Grave) has opened up the novel to create an engrossing new story with plenty of twists to surprise even those familiar with the original version.

The year is 1963 and Palmer is serving in the Army in West Berlin but has been caught selling contraband by the military police and is now languishing in prison. As luck would have it, one of his blackmarket contacts may just know the whereabouts of a kidnapped nuclear scientist who has secrets vital to the security of the West. So Palmer is sprung from his cell by spymaster Dalby (Tom Hollander) to embark on a new career in espionage and recover the missing boffin.

Keeping a wary eye on the freshfaced novice is his icy, Oxfordeducated spook superior, Jean (Lucy Boynton, Bohemian Rhapsody, left), while CIA agent Maddox (Ashley Thomas, Top Boy) also has his part to play in the operation – though there’s reason to question exactly where the American’s loyalties lie.

As Palmer crosses over into East Berlin to face the enemy, he rapidly finds that he has to live on his wits just to stay alive – but back on the other side of the Iron Curtain, he must also battle the class-ridden British Establishment of the age and the snobbery of his colleagues.

Cole imbues his maverick Palmer with a winning sense of roguish mischief, and his scenes with Hollander’s languorously witty Dalby are a joy. But viewers will also savour the fascinating nuances of spying ‘tradecraft’, plus all the periodperfect details, from a new-fangled cafetiere to the iconic glasses which Caine first sported and which have now been adopted by Cole – exactly the way for a rising star to make an eye-catching spectacle of himself.