‘What goes on behind the cloaks and daggers’: George Markstein and the dramatization of counterintelligence on British television

ABSTRACT

This article explores methods and approaches by which scholars can examine the representation of intelligence agencies in television drama, arguing that television can be productively separated from literature and film by virtue of its mass audience, its institutional character, and the form of the episodic series, which typically causes its narratives to hew towards the conservative and affirmative. This will be explored through and complicated by a case study of the career of television writer George Markstein and three series which he played a key role in creating and overseeing: The Prisoner, Special Branch and Mr Palfrey of Westminster.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Rodney Marshall and Andrew Pixley for their generous assistance in the development of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Wark erroneously claims that The Prisoner was based on The Cooler, when in fact the television series predated the novel by seven years. Wark, “Fictions of History,” 2.

2. Andrew and Dilks, “Introduction,” 4.

3. Cooke, Troy Kennedy Martin, 139.

4. Wark, “Fictions of History,” 8.

5. Ellis, Seeing Things, 46–47.

6. Willmetts, “The Cultural Turn in Intelligence Studies,” 800.

7. Book-length studies devoted entirely to television spy dramas include Britton, Spy Television; Chapman, Saints and Avengers; and Oldham, Paranoid Visions.

8. Taylor, “Spying in Film and Fiction.”

9. Zegart, “Spytainment.”

10. Scannell, “Public Service Broadcasting and Modern Public Life,” 138.

11. Prior, “An Audience Research Report.” See also Sisman, John le Carré, 406.

12. Wilkinson, Secrecy and the Media, 471–472.

13. Kackman, Citizen Spy; Jenkins, The CIA in Hollywood.

14. Yelamos, Goodman and Stout, “Intelligence and Culture,” 476.

15. Kackman. Citizen Spy, 81.

16. Mills, The BBC; Seaton, “Pinkoes and Traitors,” 288–310; Shaw, ‘The BBC, the State and Cold War Culture’.

17. Cobley, ‘It’s a Fine Line Between Safety and Terror,” 41.

18. Sisman, John le Carré. 395–410.

19. Willmetts, “The Cultural Turn in Intelligence Studies,” 802.

20. Corner, “Issues in the Historiography of Television,” 276.

21. Seaton, “Pinkoes and Traitors,” 402–403.

22. Wheatley, “Introduction,” 9–10.

23. Fahri; quoted in Davy, “So who was George Markstein?”, 31–32.

24. Bignell, “James Bond’s Forgotten Beginnings.”

25. Buxton. From The Avengers to Miami Vice, 23–24.

26. Ibid., 77.

27. Chapman, Saints and Avengers, 21–22, 38.

28. Denning, Cover Stories, 34, 140.

29. Oldham, Paranoid Visions, 16-44.

30. Johnson, Telefantasy, 53. See also Bignell, “And the Rest is History.”

31. Markstein; interviewed in Six Into One: The Prisoner File, directed by Postman, Laurens C., aired September 22, 1984, on Channel 4 (Illuminations).

32. Johnson, Telefantasy, 56.

33. Buxton, From The Avengers to Miami Vice, 96.

34. Booth, Not a Number, 178; and Markstein; quoted in Fairclough, The Prisoner, 18.

35. Moran, Classified, 165–174.

36. Murphy, Security and Special Operations, 25.

37. Griefer; quoted in Davy, ‘So who was George Markstein?’, 37.

38. Barnes, Dead Doubles, 7.

39. Ibid., 46.

40. Allason, The Branch, 141.

41. Hermiston, The Greatest Traitor, 259–280.

42. Chapman, Saints and Avengers, 12.

43. The most extensive account available when Special Branch was produced was Page et al, Philby, an expanded version of the 1967 Sunday Times exposé. For a more recent account, drawing upon the intervening decades of research into the topic, see Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends.

44. Creeber, Serial Television, 7.

45. Day-Lewis, Talk of Drama, 215. See also Sexton, “The Origins of Gritty Realism.”

46. West, “Foreword,” ix. See also Oldham, Paranoid Visions, 59–69.

47. Goodman, British Spy Fiction, 173.

48. Shaw, “From Liverpool to Russia, with Love,” 245.

49. Manning, John le Carré and the Cold War, 117.

50. Bolton, The Blunt Affair, 3.

51. Westad, The Cold War, 310.

52. Wright, Spycatcher, 68.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joseph Oldham

Joseph Oldham is a lecturer in Communication and Mass Media at the British University in Egypt. His research interests including the Cold War, spy fiction, cultures of conspiracy and British television drama. He has published the monograph Paranoid Visions: Spies, Conspiracies and the Secret State in British Television Drama (Manchester University Press, 2017) and articles in Cold War History, the Journal of Intelligence History, the Journal of British Cinema and Television, Adaptation, the Journal of Popular Television and the collection Spy Chiefs, Volume 1: Intelligence Leaders in the United States and United Kingdom (Georgetown University Press, 2018). He has previously taught in American Studies at the University of Hull, Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick, and Media and Communication at the Universities of Westminster and Leicester.