No. 90 The Little Drummer Girl (2018) 79/100

 

Shannon gets joint top billing in this 6 parts miniseries along with Alexander Skarsgard, but I think that’s down to those actors’ higher profile as this is really the Florence Pugh show.

 

She is the titular ‘little drummer girl’ a vague titled explained in passing by Charles Dance who laments about not being able to break a fanatical little drummer boy in a previous conflict, so what chance did he have with the elite terrorists?

 

The show is set in the late 70’s and opens with a pretty girl dropping off a bag of ‘music records’ at a diplomat’s house. She doesn’t attract suspicion, but we soon learn that the bag was a bomb when the diplomat’s house explodes.

 

Shannon runs an anti-terror Israeli unit and is charged with bringing down the Palestinian cell who caused the outrage. Short of a good plan of his own he decides to copy the terrorists and recruits a pretty young woman to infiltrate the cell. He picks Frances Pugh who is an actress touring with a play in Greece. Her motivations for joining up are a bit unclear but it many be down to Skarsgard and his seduction process which includes a late-night visit to the Acropolis.

 

The Israelis mange to capture and then kill a Palestinian and Florence is set up as his vengeful girlfriend. She gets lots of training in various spying techniques and a whole backstory is invented for her fake relationship with the dead terrorist. The bad guys take the bait, and Florence is soon at a training camp and getting handy with a rifle. She befriends a young girl who later dies in an Israeli air strike and seeds are sown about her loyalties.

 

The action then moves to England with the terrorists planning on bombing an Israeli lecturer on the anniversary of the date that Israel came into being. Florence meets up with the head of the terror cell and is given a bomb to plant. Will she go through with this or is her loyalty still with the Israelis?

 

I quite liked this well produced series, but it was painfully slow with enough material for possibly a two-hour film. The first two hours are about the recruitment and the next two about training. There is some minor peril when Florence’s cover is nearly blown but you are pretty sure it won’t be what with two episodes still to go. It does ratchet up somewhat in the last two hours, but the glacial pace meant it was quite hard to get overly invested.

 

Shannon is decent, supporting a big moustache which Charles Dance rightly compliments him on. He is however always in the control room reacting to stuff and doesn’t move things along much himself. Skarsgard is better as the intense spy and trainer, but the main kudos go to Florence Pugh who does good work and was often in her underwear.

 

The politics of the matter are still as volatile as the contents of the briefcases, but if you step back from that there is a decent spy thriller in here. The gadgets and techniques on show were interesting and it’s clear that this was a cold war classic from John Le Carre. My grumbles are over the ‘bang for buck’ ratio with there being a lot of padding to fill out the six episodes. I appreciate the miniseries format allows more time for character development and plot but there wasn’t enough here to justify a full quarter of a day to watch it! 

 

When is Shannon-On? – 06.38

Outcome?  Still running the anti-terror cell

TV Mini Series  3/5

Shannon Stars 3/5