London Spy as a Subversive Spy Thriller

Abstract

Although the thematisation of the events of 9/11 and 7/7 and the ensuing topics of mass monitoring and social control have garnered considerable popular and academic attention, few critical accounts concentrating on the BBC2 crime mini-series London Spy (2015) exist. The series might seem as if it is just another crime drama capitalising on real-life sensational subjects such as the whistleblowing phenomenon and the suspicious death of the MI6 agent Gareth Williams; however, taking into account the series' hybridised form of spy and detective narratives, thriller and drama, London Spy appears to be a critical reappraisal and progressive development of the more established spy and detective texts such as the eponymous James Bond and Sherlock Holmes series. The latter group of works tends to evoke the terrorist threats and various conspiracies in order to neutralise them and to reaffirm the normality of the status quo. In contrast, in London Spy, those issues are not resolved so neatly and the state remains an object of criticism. Furthermore, the series features many spies from minority groups as main characters, granting agency and voices to those marginalised within the spy and detective genres, which tend to be dominated by heterosexual male heroes. As a result, it propagates a kind of subversive spy drama that re-politicises both the individual issue of gendered representations and the collective issues of mass surveillance and the undemocratic workings of the state.