The Game (2014) - "The best hour of TV ever"

Books, comics, TV, music
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(I tried to search for a thread on this show, but searching for “The Game” on a gaming forum failed so hard that when I then tried to restrict it to this subforum, the search broke entirely.)

This is a 2014 BBC spy thriller, and right off the bat, I just have to say that it is fan-f’ing-tastic. I saw it mentioned in this Guardian barely-an-article:

I didn’t really dive into the claim that one episode is “the best hour of TV” or whatever, I just got it from the library, but I would certainly rate the six episodes as “possibly the best six hours of TV I have seen”. I recognized many of the actors from, uh, other British things, and they all do a great job. The pacing is great, the mood and setting is spot-on, and the characters are wonderful–so much so that at the end, I turned to my wife and said “Every one of the main characters had a great character arc”. I would probably refine that a little, in retrospect, but each of the main characters was so strong, in different ways, and the one that I liked the least and was least impressed with at the beginning became my favorite and the most interesting.

The tension ramps up and down brilliantly throughout each episode, and the twists are a great mixture of telegraphed and pure surprise. I’ve probably thought more about this than any other recent TV.

A little more context, this is pure Le Carré (The Spy Who Came in From the Cold; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), though not actually written or associated with him. 1970s MI5 uncovers a big Soviet operation and a crew of highly-flawed Brits with a variety of different accents (that is, classes) have to race to figure it out, complete with invented jargon (“the fray”, “Daddy”), dead drops, and tiny European cars.

Some disclaimers to water down my above praise: I am a huge Le Carré fanboy, so this is right up my alley. The last episode is, I think, a tad rushed, though they stick the landing. And there have been a bunch of layoffs and stuff at work, so this kind of take-your-emotions-through-the-wringer character-driven thriller was perfect for my current stress levels.

But if you like spy thrillers and haven’t seen this, do it.

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Sounds intriguing! Looks like on Amazon Prime maybe?

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The Game is the least googlable title ever created.

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I actually don’t know! I got mine from the library.

I had so much trouble when I was trying to find out about it. I think you have to Google "the game" 2014 to consistently get it.

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VOD for sale on Prime, $2/episode in the US.

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Wow, this looks terrific. Thank you for the recommendation!

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Some quick googling shows that it’s available for streaming for free on Australia’s ABC iView. I made an account and used my surfshark VPN and I was able to get the first episode to go for me.

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It’s apparently on Hoopla, which is one of those public library services. (Unfortunately, my local library appears to be a Kanopy outfit.)

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Watched this on Hoopla, thanks for the recommendation. I agree it was very good, although it does seem at times like a “greatest hits of cold war spy thrillers”. And yeah, the last episode accelerates things a lot. But very well made.

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I think this is very fair. I love these kinds of spy thrillers, though, so it definitely worked for me. I’ve read probably 80% (or more) of Le Carré’s novels, and there were several times where I thought, “If this were a Le Carré novel, the next thing to happen would be…” and sure enough, it did.

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Also, I wasn’t alive back then, but my mom says they nailed the 70s vibe just right, down to the old white guy with the sandwich board predicting the end of the world. I recently listened to The Rest is History podcast’s series on Britain in the 70s and the miner’s strike, so that part of England being “on its uppers” (as they’d say) was at least recognizable to me.