The challenge facing any TV version of The Ipcress File was always going to be to nod to the 1965 film, “without becoming so drenched in homage” it reeked of “cheap aftershave”, said Barbara Ellen in The Observer. For the most part, this six-part ITV series succeeds, retaining the film’s basic plot – a nuclear scientist is kidnapped from Cold War Britain – with a few tweaks. Joe Cole stars as Harry Palmer, the working-class, “culinary-minded intelligence agent” memorably played by Michael Caine. Cole has kept Caine’s “nerd-core spectacles and mac”, and while at first he seems “too choirboy-pretty”, he grows into the part.
Some will find it “all a bit cartoony and shallow”, said Hugo Rifkind in The Times, but I loved it. “It’s Sunday night, it’s ITV and, while the goodies might be a bit of a mess, at least the baddies are definitely bad. What more could you want?”
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