As part of Variety‘s 100 Greatest Television Shows of All Time issue, we asked 12 of our favorite creators of television to discuss the series that inspire and move them. Check out all the essays, and read our full list of the best TV shows ever made.
Last year, I was in New York, in the middle of filming my murder mystery series “A Murder at the End of the World.” A friend came to stay with me — and, as we scrolled through streamers as you always end up doing, he suggested we watch “London Spy.” I hadn’t even heard of it, and then: We were up until 3 or 4 in the morning, all because I couldn’t stop watching.
The series was inspired by the real-life death of an MI6 agent, but it is a really thoughtful way of adapting the story. Because at the center of this series are questions of identity and truth: truth within love, truth within espionage. Ben Whishaw’s character, mourning a person taken from him way too soon, is sent on this journey. He has to find out the truth about a person — a spy, unbeknownst to him — with whom he had a brief, powerful relationship.
“London Spy” has a very nonlinear way of telling its story, so you as a viewer are constantly destabilized as to who you believe. It suits the journey Ben Whishaw’s character is on. He knows nothing about the world of espionage — he’s flying by the seat of his pants the entire time. He’s working from vulnerability and sheer willpower, and he doesn’t hide the fact that he doesn’t know anything and is on his back foot the entire time.
It ticked all the boxes of what I want in a series: First, Ben Whishaw, because I would watch him stare at a blank wall. And when Jim Broadbent, Harriet Walter and then Charlotte Rampling turned up, I was like, Are you kidding? Is every great British actor in this? Most of all, Tom Rob Smith’s scripts cleverly weave threads of different narratives, including a theme of being a gay man in London’s secret service at a time when that was illegal, and how that secrecy affected the central relationship. Through all the different threads, you’ve got Ben navigating you and holding your hand.
I found this so informative as a reference. On both series, the love story is at center stage. Ben’s and my characters, both having lost someone they loved, want to solve a mystery as a way to be close to this person. And “London Spy” beautifully centers the love story as well as it centers the mystery.
Emma Corrin, a Golden Globe winner for their role as Princess Diana on “The Crown,” most recently starred in “A Murder at the End of the World.”
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