![]() The Korea Olympic Committee has conducted a search for hidden cameras through the restrooms and change rooms of state-run sports villages used by Olympic delegates and national teams. The investigation began after one of Jung's friends reported to police after watching related clips kept in his notebook. In August, the head coach of South Korea's swimming national squad resigned to take responsibility for the scandal. In 2013, he allegedly installed his hidden camera at an athletes' village in Jincheon 88 kilometers (54 miles) south of Seoul. Jung was accused of taking candid shots with a secret camera six times from 2009 to 2013. Prosecutors brought charges against a 24-year-old man surnamed Jung and three others, including a national team member, who will stand trial without being detained physically. This is all very fine and elegant, but it’s lacking in charisma.A file picture showing investigators checking a dressing room for athletes.įour male swimmers were indicted Friday over a scandal involving hidden cameras installed in the dressing rooms of swimming pools to take candid shots of female colleagues. Perhaps it suffers from an unfortunate comparison with another recent series adapted from a Macintyre book, SAS Rogue Heroes, which channels its fascinating history lesson into something far more vivacious and entertaining. These are useful but oddly static, and certainly slow the momentum. It tries to get around the complexity of the plot with a number of conversations simply explaining what is going on. There is plenty of excitement in the material – ambushes, bombs, chases, executions, and, of course, a royal connection, when Sir Anthony Blunt turns up – yet it still manages to drag its feet. Yet ironically, given that it deals with the fall of the stuffy old guard, there’s something a little stuffy and uptight about the whole thing. It’s laid on a bit thick, but Maxwell Martin just about carries it off. But the old world is changing, and Thomas – northern, female, married to a Black doctor – is supposed to represent that. When that is questioned by one of their own pledging his allegiance to the communist cause, they are almost as baffled and offended as they are alarmed. MI6 is an old boys’ network where decisions of international importance are hashed out in members’ clubs and on cricket pitches. There is an upper-echelons fantasy of Englishness at play. ![]() The most intriguing code of all, which A Spy Among Friends excels at exploring, is that of class and tradition. Men with umbrellas exchange instructions in newspapers names are seemingly mispronounced, in order to convey a clandestine message. There are plenty of small thrills to be had from a world built on codes and double meanings. “Could you explain to me why you let the most dangerous Soviet penetration agent this country has ever known leg it?” she asks, sternly, as we learn how Philby was able to abscond. When she sits down to business, at a desk with a tape recorder, Line of Duty fans will surely be waiting for that long beep. Lily is a “composite” of real people, an invention to carry the drama along. Anna Maxwell Martin plays Lily Thomas, an MI5 agent looking into what exactly happened. Pearce makes Philby’s charisma apparent for all to see, and makes the most of his range, whether that’s taking part in a West End song and dance or dealing with the fallout from his unmasking. Lewis is suitably ambiguous as Elliott, who carries with him the hurt of a jilted lover and the confusion of a man whose entire belief system is falling apart. There’s no denying that this is a fabulous cast. ![]() Photograph: Ed Miller/Sony Pictures Television ![]() ![]() Spy-on-spy spying! … Lily Thomas (Anna Maxwell Martin). It becomes a sort of espionage stew at this point, jumping around in time from the early days of Philby and Elliott’s friendship in the second world war, to MI5’s 1963 interrogation of Elliott, to work out who knew what about Philby and when. His close friend and fellow SIS (AKA MI6) agent Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis) is tasked with going to Beirut to retrieve Philby and extract a full confession, despite appearing to doubt the depth of his friend’s betrayal. It begins with the big reveal that Philby ( Guy Pearce) is a traitor who has been working for the KGB and feeding them intel for the past 20 years. It comes with a starry cast and what should be an irresistible tale of intrigue, double-crossing and suspense, stretched out over multiple locations from Istanbul, Beirut and London to Moscow and Ohio. This is one of the flagship dramas to launch ITV’s revamped online player and new subscription service. The story of the notorious MI6 agent and Soviet spy Kim Philby has been told numerous times before, but A Spy Among Friends (ITVX) has a fresh bash at it, using Ben Macintyre’s book of the same name as its source and inspiration. ![]()
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