Ben Macintyre’s New York Times best-seller to debut as a limited series on BritBox Australia.
BritBox Australia, as part of a deal with Sony Pictures Television, will be exclusively premiering A Spy Among Friends later this year.
The first-ever adaption of the award-winning novel by Ben Macintyre stars Golden Globe and Emmy® Award-winning actor Damian Lewis (Homeland, Billions, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) and Emmy® Award-winner Guy Pearce (Jack Irish, Mare of Easttown, The Hurt Locker).
A Spy Among Friends dramatises the true story of betrayal and friendship, set in the secretive world of espionage, marking as one of the most notorious traitor stories in British spy history.
Guy Pearce stars as the charming Kim Philby, and Damian Lewis plays his colleague and long time friend, Nicholas Elliott.
The six-episode limited series follows a friendship that resulted in the gutting of British and American intelligence at the height of the Cold War and shaped the field of play for a dangerous game against Russia that still continues today.
Kim Philby is England’s most famous traitor from the Cold War era, who was recruited by Soviet Intelligence to penetrate MI6; something he was able to do undetected for thirty years. Nicholas Elliott was a highly respected intelligence officer who discovered his closest friend of 23 years had been betraying him from the very beginning.
The series was created by Emmy® and Golden Globe® Award-winning British writer Alexander Cary (Homeland, Taken), who is producing alongside BAFTA award-winner Patrick Spence (Adult Material, Fortitude, Peaky Blinders).
Country Manager of BritBox Australia Moira Hogan said:
“With its outstanding cast and high quality production, A Spy Among Friends tells the story of close friendship and complete betrayal against the backdrop of the Cold War. This is a fascinating insight into a world of elite British spies and we’re thrilled to bring A Spy Among Friends as a BritBox Original to audiences.”
The all-star cast also includes Anna Maxwell Martin (Motherland, Line of Duty) and Stephen Kunken (Billions, The Handmaid’s Tale) and Adrian Edmondson (Back to Life, The Pact).
The limited series is directed by BAFTA award-winner Nick Murphy (Save Me, A Christmas Carol) and produced by BAFTA award-winner Chrissy Skinns (Elizabeth is Missing, The Last Kingdom). Bob Bookman, Alan Gasmer, Peter Jaysen are executive producers for Veritas Entertainment Group. Damian Lewis will also serve as executive producer through his production company, Ginger Biscuit Entertainment
The series is produced in collaboration with Sony Pictures Television, ITV Studios and Veritas Entertainment Group. A Spy Among Friends will be broadcast in the United Kingdom on ITVX later this year. The series is distributed internationally by Sony Pictures Television.
Don’t miss Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce in A spy Amongst Friends about Kim Philby and if you haven’t read it yet, Ben Macintyre will be disappointed!
The secret world of MI6 can be a small one. As all espionage cognoscenti know, Kim Philby was a member of the infamous Cambridge Five along with Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and John Cairncross. Philby knew John le Carré (aka David Cornwell) and ended le Carré’s career in MI6 by treacherously informing on all his East European secret agents.
Philby (and maybe other Famous Five members) also knew Colonel Alan Brooke Pemberton CVO MBE in the fifties when Pemberton was ADC to Field Marshall Sir Gerald Walter Robert Templer and fought in the guerrilla war known as the Malayan Emergency. Philby was sniffing around for information to help the communist Malayan insurgents but got little useful data from Templer’s camp and the insurgents (the Malayan National Liberation Army) were eventually defeated by the British.
In the early seventies Alan Pemberton recruited one Bill Fairclough for MI6 (codename JJ). They worked together on and off for the next twenty years or so. Before 2014 Fairclough’s links with various intelligence agencies became public knowledge and to quash any fake narratives Fairclough set about publishing a series of factual autobiographical novels known as The Burlington Files, only one of which (Beyond Enkription) has been published to date.
Given Alan Pemberton (Fairclough’s original MI6 handler knew Kim Philby) it is unsurprising that John le Carré turned down Bill Fairclough’s offer in 2014 to collaborate on the action packed factual Burlington Files series. David Cornwell responded along the lines of “Why should I? I’ve got by so far without collaboration so why bother now?” An expected but realistic response from a famous expert in passive fiction who refused to visit theburlingtonfiles.org in case his photo was snatched while on line! Or maybe because Pemberton’s People in MI6 even included Roy Astley Richards OBE (Winston Churchill’s bodyguard) and an eccentric British Brigadier (Peter ‘Scrubber’ Stewart-Richardson) who was once refused permission to join the Afghan Mujahideen.