The Sandbaggers
A British show about espionage might just be the best television show ever, in part, because there was a time when we in the West knew Russia was our enemy
***Please take out a membership to support the light of truth.***
The Sandbaggers isn’t just the best TV series about espionage — it might be the best television show ever.
I’m in the middle of the third and final season, and I’m already lighting candles and praying that the grief after watching the final episode doesn’t linger too long.
Once upon a time in the West, we knew the KGB was our enemy. We didn’t playing footsie with fascists. Communism was a nice idea, but the emperors of the Russian state — for it was never a union — practiced totalitarianism, and we in the West knew them for what they were and should have listened to General Patton.
I watch The Sandbaggers with both awe and longing — a longing for the days in the 1970s when our US president was a good and decent man, and before ‘greed is good’ became the mantra for the dick-swinging swells of the coked up ‘80s.
Airing in 1978, 1979, and 1980, The Sandbaggers is more stage play than action, its characters talking and thinking their way to conclusions. It’s spycraft at the level of Shakespeare, intellectually speaking. It takes place in 1970s Britain, and its lead actor, Roy Marsden, as the steel-eyed, fierceheart Neil Burnside, is straight outta the Royal Shakespeare Company.
The show was produced by Yorkshire Television and created by Ian Mackintosh, a former Royal Naval officer turned writer, who disappeared over Alaska in a plane crash in July 1979, having completed just four scripts. The disappearance of Mackintosh led to speculation that he was part of the spycraft world, particularly since the consensus is there’s never been a more realistic view of UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).
Watching the show, it feels as if you are actually in the room with its characters, who aren’t actors but appear to be actual agents, fighting against the Russians, understanding that the KGB is often behind the proxy wars and terrorist incidents that flare up in other countries. At the very least, Burnside and his Sandbaggers know to rule out the Russians first, before drawing any conclusions.
Burnside is Director of SIS’s Operations (D.Ops), a former Royal Marine, who was once a Sandbagger himself. He navigates through a world of bureaucrats with a cunning never captured on screen before. He’ll order a hit on the woman of his dreams, if it means not spoiling ‘the special relationship’ with his best friend, a CIA agent in charge of the London bureau, Jeff Ross, played uncomfortably well by actor Bob Sherman.
Burnside never has a good day, just lives to see the next. I often find myself saying out loud: ‘It’s a really bad day for Neil.’
Burnside is responsible for the Sandbaggers, officially SIS’s ‘Special Operations Section,’ a crack team led by the unflappable Willie Caine, played brilliantly by Ray Lonnen.
Caine is the most understated rock star in espionage, and Lonnen plays him superbly. Never flashy, always solid, a quiet wit that I lean in to hear, and when he returns from a successful mission — after enduring shootouts, honey pot agents, and daring rescue missions — Burnside, barely looking up from his desk, breaks his balls about letting the Russians recapture a defector. It’s Neil’s way of saying, ‘You fucked up, but I’m glad you’re safe.’
They’re not perfect, but they’re moral. And they never let the totalitarian bastards to their East get a win.
Which makes the show so bloody relevant in this moment.
The United States is infested with politicians with snow on their boots, traitors every gaddamn one of them. History will be unkind to the entire rotten lot, and hopefully, the ICC will as well. The White House is comprised of venal deviants who couldn’t even hold a conversation with Neil Burnside — they’re just too dumb.
In one episode, Burnside is so intent on not letting cutbacks close down a satellite office — he knew the KGB would swoop in and take over the area in a heartbeat — that he pulled some fictional geography, certain not one MP would bother checking a map. It’s personal for him — he’s already down to two Sandbaggers from the usual staff of three, and defending SIS is his life.
The constant struggles between intelligence agents and politics is embodied in Burnside’s ties to his former father-in-law, the FCO Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Wellingham. Another deft bit of theater. Of course, Burnside’s direct superior is an annoying company man, SIS’s Deputy Chief, Matthew Peele, who is easy to love-hate.
If I had to pick a favorite element — aside from simply watching Burnside and Caine think — it would have to be the warm and fuzzy genuine frenemy maneuverings between Burnside and Ross, the CIA man.
These are two men who through trust and time formed an actual bond based on mutual respect in a truly terrible world filled with monsters, who are often trying to kill them.
At the time the show was written, it was still a man’s world so if there’s one weakness, it’s that the writers didn’t know what to do with the women characters who populate the series. Each time Burnside rudely demands coffee from one of his brilliant staffers in the front office, I silently cringe. I joined this man’s world in the ’90s, 20 years later, in a newsroom where the patriarchy was trying to hold on to its power as the world turned.
I forgive the writing staff. It was the ‘70s. Just like I forgave my favorite French director Jean Pierre Melville. Women’s lib was along way off when Melville was autering.
“I thought you were dead,” Burnside tells his new boss. The mutual loathing between spy and bureaucrat is always delightful, but you never doubt their patriotism, to crown and country, and the UK-US alliance as beautifully portrayed by the special relationship between Burnside and Ross.
I mourn for such times of clarity of conviction, making it more difficult each day to stomach the treasony slobs in America.
****
****
Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members.
I expose the corruption of billionaire fascists, while relying on memberships for support.
Thank you in advance for considering the following:
Share my reporting with allies
Buying my ebooks
A private link to an annual membership discount for older adults, those on fixed incomes or drawing disability, as well as activists and members of the media is available upon request at bettedangerous/gmail. 🥹
More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
🤍
Begin each day with a grateful heart.
🤍