Spyship: a great TV drama well worth another watch
Spyship was a gripping BBC TV drama in the early 1980s which still entertains. Loosely based on the true story of the disappearance of the trawler FV Gaul, Spyship tells the tale of a fishing boat that sinks whilst on an espionage mission for the British during the Cold War. The son of one of the sailors lost at sea tries to find out the truth behind what happened.
The six part drama is fairly slow moving, which gives the characters time to develop and the focus is very much on them for right from the start the viewer knows the rough circumstances of the sinking, that a cover-up is happening and who is involved in it.
The plot does noticeably speed up in the final episode, and it’s a shame that some of the final internal bureaucratic politics and unlikely collaboration between nominal enemies did not feature earlier in the series and so play out in more detail.
Even so, it makes for a satisfyingly dramatic final episode (though I was a little distracted by discovering that one key scene was filmed at the home of a school friend) and a poignant finale which matches the great piece of tragic singing used in the titles sequence:
The finale was shocking at the time and still rounds off the series in a powerful way even if some of the shock has been dulled by (without giving away any spoilers) the ending being of a type which has appeared in several other espionage thrillers since.
A small point about the quality of the DVD: the subtitles were put together by someone with a fairly random approach to the use of capital letters. At least the aggrivation caused by the repeated errors does not hinder understanding as otherwise the subtitles are competent.
If you like this, you may well also enjoy The Sandbaggers.
Interestingly the fishing vessel in the series is called “Caister”; a slight tip off for those who know that the Gaul’s original name was “Ranger Castor”
Good spot!