Friends and friends,
How are you? Today I won’t talk about the weather: I’m counting on you seeing it as a positive evolution in my particular war against summer.
There’s not much this week… well, yes, there’s a lot, as always. I mean there’s not much good.
The end of Silo has already been released, which is quite satisfactory, although having more seasons ahead forces you to live in a continuous cliffhanger. It is true that the series had entered a disconcerting slump (especially after the tremendous pilot), but the last two episodes are excellent. I’ll let them finish it and we’ll discuss it, because if I do it now I’m going to walk into a minefield.
On the other hand, the fourth and final season of Jack Ryan has been released. For those of you who aren’t aware, the character was invented in the mid-’80s by a writer and former insurance agent named Tom Clancy. He became so popular (the character) that since the 1990s, he has been played by Alec Baldwyn, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and John Krasinski. My favorite movie is still the first one, The Hunt for Red October. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a real wonder, probably because of Sean Connery who is amazing as the commander of a Soviet nuclear submarine.
I highly recommend it.
Ryan is a CIA operative who starts out as an analyst and ends up killing more gang than Rambo on a bad day.
Jack Ryan arrives on Prime video (played by the aforementioned Krasinski) after a rather regular second season, focused on a banana regime, whose main flaw is that the banana republic is how the Americans imagine a banana republic and with Jordi Mollá playing the role of Venezuelan president in a dubious performance. The third was not much better, with a bland plot in Moscow.
The fourth begins much better, with drug traffickers, special operations groups that it is not very clear who controls, and a mysterious double agent that operates at the top of the US government pyramid, doing and undoing as he pleases.
There are only two episodes available at the moment, but it’s certainly off to a great start.
I also urge you to stay away from Glamorous, the new Kim Cattrall series, which is ridiculously ridiculous. And that they do the same with And just like that, the sequel to Sex and the City, which can only be explained by the fact that they have paid a million dollars to its protagonists.
It’s sad that the world revolves around money, but if they give me ten million bucks, I’ll go down La Rambla making croquettes every day of the week. That is why I understand these actresses, willing to bury their own legacy in order to add a few zeros to their bank account, which in some cases was already buoyant. Since I’ve never had much money, I understand them even better: it’s what the working class has and so on. Of course, the series is epic crap, with embarrassing dialogues and drowning in its own obsession with being relevant, because one day it was. But -I repeat- I understand: it must be very nice to go to the ATM, ask for a statement and you get so many zeros that the paper runs out.
Finally, there is a great animated movie on Netflix. It’s called Nimona and it’s a kind of retropunk tale that has left me stunned by the accuracy of its script and how well drawn its characters are. Ideal to see with the kids any weekend. And even without them, if you squeeze me.
And here my notes for today. I’ll be back with more shortly, if you like.
Take care,
T.G.R.
2023-07-02 20:45:20
#CIA #wins #unbelievers #KM77 #Magazine
Interested in real raw intelligence, encryption, espionage and ungentlemanly warfare? Do read the epic fact based spy thriller, Bill Fairclough’s Beyond Enkription, the first stand-alone novel of six in TheBurlingtonFiles series. He was one of Pemberton’s People in MI6.
Beyond Enkription follows the real life of a real spy, Bill Fairclough (MI6 codename JJ) aka Edward Burlington who worked for British Intelligence, the CIA et al. It’s the stuff memorable spy films are made of, raw, realistic yet punchy, pacy and provocative; a super read as long as you don’t expect John le Carré’s delicate diction, sophisticated syntax and placid plots.
For the synopsis of Beyond Enkription see TheBurlingtonFiles website. This thriller is like nothing we have ever come across before. Indeed, we wonder what The Burlington Files would have been like if David Cornwell aka John le Carré had collaborated with Bill Fairclough. They did consider it and even though they didn’t collaborate, Beyond Enkription is still described as ”up there with My Silent War by Kim Philby and No Other Choice by George Blake”. Why? The novel explores the exploitation of the ignorance and naivety of agents to the same extent as MI6 does in real life.
As for Bill Fairclough, he has even been described as a real life posh Harry Palmer; there are many intriguing bios of him on the web. As for Beyond Enkription, it’s a must read for espionage cognoscenti. To relish in this totally different fact based espionage thriller best do some research first. Try reading two brief news articles published on TheBurlingtonFiles website. One is about characters’ identities (September 2021) and the other about Pemberton’s People (October 2022). What is amazing is that these articles were only published many years after Beyond Enkription itself was. You’ll soon be immersed in a whole new world!
As for TheBurlingtonFiles website, it is like a living espionage museum and as breathtaking as a compelling thriller in its own right.