Spy Game could use a clue

The TV show The Game.

Spying ain't what it used to be. Whatever good whistleblower Edward Snowden has done, he certainly hasn't helped by telling us the truth about what spying really involves these days: geeks with computers.

Where once there was romance (at least in fiction), now spying comes down to faceless kids with PhDs from MIT who write giant computer programmes that hoover up every bit of electronic information there is in the world and use it, well, for purposes I'm still not clear on.

Spying certainly wasn't like that in 1972. During the Cold War - at least in the world of a thousand Le Carre novels, and of SoHo's new drama The Game (8.30pm, Sundays) - spying was all about tradecraft, spy masters, dead drops, sleepers and moles. It was, as one spy put it in the opening episode of The Game, all about "a war of variables and unknowns, and all we can do is watch, surmise and react". Now that's romance.

Which is why I really wished I'd liked the premiere of The Game more than I did. There are certainly things to enjoy about this BBC six-parter, not least how it looks.

The makers of The Game have taken their lead in production design from the terrific 2011 adaptation of Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: it's all brutal architecture, brown hues, blank faces, chain smokers and rain. Even the plot, at least what we know of it so far, is pure Le Carre and it goes something like this: The counter-intelligence committee at MI5 has determined, after an enemy sleeper spy breaks cover, that the Soviets have launched something called Operation Glass. The Brits have no idea what it is, but they have, thanks to the sleeper, some idea of what it means: "[the Soviets] are planning to tear everything down." In charge of finding out what's about to happen is "Daddy", the head of counter-intelligence (the always excellent Brian Cox). He instructs his bright young thing Joe (Tom Hughes) to use the sleeper's information and knowledge to discover what Operation Glass means. Meanwhile fellow MI5-er Bobby (Friday Night Dinner's Paul Ritter) isn't convinced that Operation Glass is real, and besides he has an agenda of his own. Also in the mix are the field agent Sarah and her dweebish husband Alan, an MI5 gadget guy.

As promising as this all sounds, the whole isn't as good as it should be. A large part of the problem is the wild lurches in tone. One moment Alan's being a twit, the next someone's getting their throat cut. It's jarring.

There are awful sub-Le Carre cliches here too: the evil KGB agent who peels his apples with a penknife, the chase through the deserted amusement park at night, the uber-arch dialogue.

And there have already been unbelievable plot developments, like the Apple Peeling Man letting Joe and his dumb cop sidekick go free rather than shooting them dead like a real spy would have.

There may well be a mystery at the heart of The Game which makes it worth viewers playing along. But this is a spy thriller that's going to have to really lift its tradecraft to keep me watching.

- Timeout