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TV ONLINE EPISODE GUIDE
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Notes : The opening scene contains a subtle in-joke. The TV set that switches on shows the title sequence to Adam Adamant Lives! - a 1960's BBC series about a Victorian adventurer who is frozen in ice, only to be revived in the swinging sixties. And the reason for including it? It was produced by Verity Lambert - the executive producer of Sleepers. Sleepers
is also of interest to Doctor Who
fans. Verity Lambert was the very first producer
of the show between 1963 and 1965, writers
John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch wrote Meglos
for season seventeen, and Michael Gough had
appeared twice in the show - first as The
Toymaker in the 1966 adventure The Celestial
Toymaker, and later as Councillor
Hedin in the Peter Davison story Arc
of Infinity. At the time Sleepers
was first broadcast, Ricco Ross would have
been recognised by most fans for playing the
Ringmaster in 1988's The Greatest Show
in the Galaxy, Tomek Bork had appeared
as Captain Sorin in 1989's The Curse
of Fenric, and in 1996 Geoffrey Sax
was hired to direct the Paul McGann TV movie. Geoffrey Sax is best known to cult TV fans as being the director of the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie. He also directed the 1998 internet thriller Killer Net. In 2002 he directed the controversial BBC2 drama Tipping the Velvet, and has directed Margery and Gladys - the comedy-drama starring June Brown and Penelope Keith, and written by Flanagan and McCulloch. Verity Lambert is probably best known for being the very first producer of Doctor Who, after which she moved on to produce both seasons of Adam Adamant Lives! After leaving the BBC she went across to the opposition where she produced, amongst other things, the Adam Faith series Budgie. Later in the decade she moved on to Euston Films where she worked as executive producer on series such as Minder and the final Quatermass story starring Sir John Mills. By the early 90s she had set up Cinema Verity - her own production company, which was responsible for a number of high-profile series including GBH, Boys from the Bush, May to December, the supernatural sitcom So Haunt Me, as well as the BBC's early-90s soap flop Eldorado. More recently she has produced all four seasons of Jonathan Creek.
Notes : Warren Clarke is one of the most familiar faces on UK television, having had parts in series such as The Onedin Line, Shelley and The Jewel in the Crown. He has made two appearances in Blackadder - as Mr Hardwood in the Blackadder the Third episode Amy and Amiability, and as Oliver Cromwell in the 1988 Comic Relief special The Cavalier Years. More recently he has been seen in the popular BBC crime drama Dalziel and Pascoe as Superintendent Andy Dalziel. Nigel Havers is probably best remembered for appearing in the BBC sitcom Don't Wait Up as Tom Latimer, and in the ITV drama series The Charmer in which he played Ralph Ernest Gorse. More recently he has appeared in the final years of Dangerfield as Doctor Jonathan Paige, The Gentleman Thief as safecracker A.J. Raffles and has been seen in two seasons of the BBC2 comedy-drama Manchild. In 1995 he appeared in The Prophecy - an episode of Chiller.
Notes : Playing the KGB's Major Nina Grishina was Joanna Kanska, probably better known for playing Dr Grete Grotowska in the second season of A Very Peculiar Practice and its sequel A Very Polish Practice. More recently she has appeared in the first episode of the Second World War detective series Foyle's War, and played Magda in Paranoia, an episode of the revived Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) in 2000. David Calder is best known to the general public for playing Dr Robert Bramwell - Eleanor Bramwell's father - in the Victorian medical series Bramwell, which ran between 1995 and 1998. Cult TV fans will remember him best for playing Commander Nathan Spring in the short-lived Star Cops and for his appearance as Sergei Lermov in a season one episode of Spooks. More recently he has had a brief role in the BBC's adaptation of Death in Holy Orders as Sir Alfred Treeves and appear in the ITV gangster series Family as Ted Cutler.
Notes : At the time Sleepers was first transmitted Christopher Rozycki would have been most familiar to viewers as Kuba Trzcinski - the Polish porter from the early years of Casualty. A year after Sleepers, Welsh actor Alan David re-appeared on screens as the permanently-annoyed Professor Griffiths in the short-lived Virtual Murder and has also appeared in Toby - an episode of the ITV anthology series Chiller. Angus McInnes who plays CIA agent Bill Sullivan, later appeared in the Sky One sci-fi series Space Island One as Walter B Shannon, the American ex-astronaut who was second in command of the Unity space station. He is probably most familiar, however, for leading the Y-Wing assault against the Death Star in the first Star Wars movie as Gold Leader. Le Mans Crescent, in Bolton, Lancashire, was covered with artificial snow to give it a wintry feel for Russian limousines driving along the road and under the arches.
The series was written by John Flanagan & Andrew McCulloch, directed by Geoffrey Sax. |
Russia. A secret room in the Kremlin is re-discovered, revealing various scenes of English life from the 1960s: a zebra crossing, a kitchen, a sitting room. Further investigation reveals files on Sergei Rublev and Vladimir Zelenski - two KGB agents who were sent to England in 1966. Their mission is unknown, as is their current status. The only person able to shed light on the mystery is Andrei Zorin, who has been incarcerated in a mental institution for the better part of twenty years. England.
A
dusty transmitter in the attic of Eccles
resident
Albert Robinson has
become active. Leaving his wife and children behind, he contacts a London
banker by the name of
Jeremy Coward,
and travels south, unexpectedly accompanied by
Morris,
his daughter's toy monkey. Over the following days, Albert
and
Jeremy
find themselves pursued not only by the KGB,
anxious to recover their 'sleeping' spies, but also by the clueless
agents of MI5
and
the ultra-paranoid
CIA.
Eventually falling into the hands of the beautiful Major
Nina Grishina of
the KGB,
they find themselves transported back to their homeland, with their
very lives hanging in the balance… As well as the clashes between the now working class Albert and the well-to-do Jeremy, other sources of humour to be found in the programme included the adventures of Morris the monkey, and the discovery of a reel of film that shows the two Russian agents after they had arrived in England. Not in itself that funny, but it was taken at the 1966 World Cup final and, according to Victor Chekhov, showed conclusively whether Geoff Hurst's controversial second goal had actually crossed the line. Needless to say, he had soon offered it to an ITV sports producer - something which K1, the MI5 agent in charge of investigating, decided was an obvious attempt to broadcast Soviet propaganda. After appropriating the film and discovering his error, he immediately orders the incredibly valuable film to be destroyed! But if the British security service was shown as being run by an incompetent Old-Boys network, where the colour of your tie is all important, their American counterparts were little better - being just as paranoid, but in a much flashier way. Sullivan's questioning of the country vicar, Rev Bancroft, and his subsequent demolition of his teapot when he suspects him to be involved in nefarious deeds has to be seen to be believed! Despite
the popularity of the series and some talk of a sequel,
Sleepers has
only been shown once more on terrestrial television - a two-part omnibus
that was shown a year later. It is this version has recently turned
up on the digital channel
UK Drama. |