All in a Good Cause
‘Oh we never tell anyone the truth.
It’s bad form.’
Wheels within wheels. Acting on a tip from D-Int, Burnside starts
investigating whether Jeff Ross’s wife is being targeted
by MI5.
Each time the Sandbaggers think they have a solid lead, it turns
out that they’ve been manipulated. Finally, MI5 is confronted
directly. It turns out both MI5 has a US air force officer over
a barrel. The CIA
was hoping to ‘sting’ MI5 to soften the pain. SIS
was caught on the middle.
Comment
Mostly talk, with the enemy again being not the KGB but someone
who’s supposedly on the same side. It also resembles that
great episode A Question of Loyalty in that the string pulling
is nearly invisible.
By the end of this episode, Burnside is as isolated as he will
be in the series, having lost James Greenley and Diane and having
had a fallout with Jeff Ross, one of his very few friends. D-Int
Edward Tyler will depart soon too. Isolation isn’t good
for the psyche, and Burnside’s enemies will take advantage
of it this season.
This episode also contains one of the greatest gags in the series:
Burnside is ordered to make economies by cutting his payroll and
closing a foreign station. He and Marianne scramble to find a
way of dodging the demand.
Personnel file
Only appearance of Jeff Ross’s wife, Jenny Ross.
Inside Burnside
Burnside has an insightful exchange with Peele at the Chinese
restaurant: ‘Typical of you, Neil - all or nothing,
no half measures.’ ‘It’s easier that way,
sir.’ Watch just how good Peele is both written and
played in this scene. The character and actor both have tough
jobs: to be the obstruction for our protagonist, but making
Peele an obvious and simple to understand obstruction would
make for boring television. Here, Jerome Willis manages to
wrap with comic timing pomposity before a junior and a desperate
need to be liked.
Later in the episode, as Burnside reasons through the hall of
mirrors through which he is forced to navigate, and espouses
one cynical
theory
of
human nature after another, one Sandbaggers viewer remarked 'I
wouldn't want to live inside that man's head.'
Sense of style
Trevor D’Arcy is soooo dapper!
