TV Review: PAGE EIGHT

By D.J. Haza / August 30, 2011

Page Eight. The show aired on Saturday night on the BBC but you can find it on the iPlayer HERE. Bill Nighy stars as Johnny Worricker an aging MI5 agent who seems to spend his life in the shadows of reality and relationships. The TV film is written and directed by Oscar-nominee David Hare who has dusted off the cobwebs to bring us his first original TV script for 20 years on BBC 2. Johnny is handed a strange file from his boss and buddy Benedict Baron (Michael Gambon) who promptly dies and leaves the entire case up in the air with the threat of tearing MI5 apart. A strangely coincidental meeting with Johnny€™s neighbour Nancy (Rachel Weisz) builds his suspicions seen as she is a political activist and he also struggles to rebuild a relationship with his daughter Julianne (Felicity Jones). Also included are Ewen Bremner as Rolo, Ralph Fiennes as the Prime Minister and several other known names as Johnny tries to figure out what is going on and save his own bacon before the file comes back to bite him in the backside. Nighy is cold and calculated as the agent who is great at analysing intelligence, but lost when it comes to his own personal affairs and life in general. As he moves rigidly through his life and the agency with his stiff upper lip he constantly looks suspicious of everyone and manages to constantly analyse his own relationships wrongly and struggles not to lie with his every breath €“ perhaps a comment on men today? Johnny is a man struggling to come to terms with life in the 21st century and seems constantly lost in the contemporary world. The one thing that struck me most about the film was that each of the characters seemed to be one person whilst working and someone completely different when at home. Johnny is an agent and a father. Benedict is his boss, but also married to his ex-wife. Everyone seems to be a double agent in their own lives and seem to share a lot of work related secrets with Johnny whilst sharing personal time with him, but act pretty cold and calculated whilst on the clock. This makes the show interesting and complex, but also a little coincidental and contrived. However, as the film twists and turns it does at least remain interesting for this fact even if it most of the characters barely get enough time on screen for us to know much about them. Page Eight is a bit of a slow burner, but I found myself enjoying it most of the time when I wasn€™t a little confused. Everything seemed a little mysterious and I wasn€™t quite sure who was lying and who wasn€™t as I tried to unravel the mystery. In all honesty through the film there€™s no where near enough information offered for the audience to be able to work anything out. You just have to wait and follow Johnny as he works it all out bit by bit. Worth a watch on the old iPlayer I suppose.