Fab hats FTW!

I hit my Toby Stephens-phase portion of my Netflix queue (and since I know that I discovered him in Jane Eyre, I can pretty much figure out exactly how long these movies have languished in my queue, but that's too depressing) (2 or 3 years! Whee!), and just finished blowing through Cambridge Spies. I definitely recommend it, and not just because Toby looks fabulous in it--though he does, and also wears a lot of fantastic hats.

Anyway, it's about these four friends who met at Cambridge who become spies for the USSR. (Interestingly enough, it was actually a group of five; the movie does include the fifth, but he only shows up briefly in one of the four episodes. The History Channel special about the real Cambridge Spies, included on the second disc, is well worth the watch.) The acting is great. The series starts off a bit slowly, and it can be a bit confusing at times, but it's interesting seeing a show portraying enemy spies in such a sympathetic light.

It's weird looking back on the Cold War in some ways. Watching the movie, I was like, "Oh, boys, you're so misguided," but couldn't get really worked up about what they were doing. Again, it was told from their point of view, but still. I'm sure that people died--people on our side died--because of their actions. They could've helped get Lee Stetson (a.k.a. Scarecrow from Scarecrow & Mrs. King) killed, if they had come around a bit later and he wasn't, you know, fictional. But I guess it's the luxury of looking at this from the vantage point of 18 years after the USSR officially dissolved. And also knowing that we had spies, too. So it was even! And fair.

...I don't know. Maybe I just need to go back to the Spy Museum.

Disclaimer: I definitely know that spying is wrong. Also? The Soviet Union bad. Also, I got confused because they got into Communism to fight Fascism, but kept at the spying after the end of WWII. Also, the King in the movie has a weird speech impediment, and now I want to know whether he actually did. He must have, right? They wouldn't randomly add that.

Anyway, seriously, if I think of them as spies for, say, al Qaeda, I'd get upset. It's just that at this point, the Soviet Union seems almost quaint, if that makes sense.