Netflix: Spying is a deadly game, as this documentary series proves

The world of espionage and the countless cases that have sprung from it have always been a very powerful vector for imagination in fiction, on the small and big screens. If he was widely popular under the pen of Ian Fleming for the adventures of his secret agent 007 (not) in many films, the theme of espionage was often found in big films: The Spy Who Arrived. The Cold, Bridge of Spies, Gorky Park, Three Days of the Condor, Letter from the Kremlin, The Jason Bourne Saga, Marathon Man, many adaptations of the works of John Le Carré, himself a former spy. .. the list is almost endless.

In terms of series, we mention, among many examples, the sensational series The Americans, created by Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, which tells about the fate of a fake KGB agent couple living in the United States in the 70s and 80s. Sleeper Cell members, before things get complicated, of course…

In this interesting register, Netflix has an excellent 8-episode documentary series, Spycraft: The Art of Espionage. Available from 2021, the episodes, which never exceed 40 minutes in length, each scan a very specific theme: code breakers; sex espionage, a powerful weapon of persuasion and blackmail and a great Russian specialty (known as “Kompromat”); high-tech and satellite surveillance; covert collection, challenging methods of surreptitiously capturing sensitive data; double agents, etc.

If of course the 21st century is mentioned, the 20th century logically takes the lion’s share, given the importance of the Cold War and the very deep involvement of espionage in the secret war in which the USSR and the United States joined forces.

Filled mostly with specialist stories and archival images, the subject is at once horrifying, poignant and fascinating, and more than ever rooted in our times. In an episode devoted to the use of poison, which we prefer, the terrible case of Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned with polonium 210 in 2006 by two FSB agents after drinking a cup of tea in his hotel bar in London.

Or, most recently, the Skripal case: eIn 2018, the small English town of Salisbury was rocked by the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with a nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s. A case that has since, of course, been adapted. in fiction.

It will also be recalled that the half-brother of the current dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, was killed at the Kuala Lumpur airport in February 2017 after receiving the deadly nerve agent VX orally. In 2019, it became clear that Kim Jong Nam was a CIA informantAnd that shortly before the poisoning, he met with his officers from the American intelligence agency… Reality will always exceed and far exceed fiction.

If Spycraft doesn’t turn you into a budding spy, the pedagogy of the subject and the strength of its subject matter make it a remarkable and unmissable documentary series.