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Best movie of this year hands down!

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Lots of style, little substance. They became so focused on camera angles they forgot about pace. It was tolerable in the first episode where it contributed to the love story, but after that it became annoying.

The near 5-hour mini began well with dreamy, boozy overtones enveloping an awakening London The haze descends upon our 2 lovers and the origins of their chance meet, Alistair aiding the woefully hungover and besotted Danny, assembling the pieces from a rant-induced phone toss. Danny at the "I should be living better than this" realization, clouded with the sleazy memories of the night before, begging and pleading for normalcy and love. Alas the sizzled and liquid love eyes cast upon him from the stranger (or so he imagines). Fast forward past the 4 hours of subsequent drama (including Alistair's death, Danny's reconnect with his original sugar daddy played by the puffy Harry Potter demon Jim Broadbent, odd encounters with Danny's parents, laughing including a tracyotimied father, an bizarre rendezvous in a upper-high class private gay men's club, a cheap and gaudy geisha performer, wisdom from the straight and exotic female roommate, Boogie Nights-inspired scene with a gay crack cocaine addicted sadist, etc. etc.) Fast forward to the closing scene with Rampling and Danny driving off into the sunset and cue the laughter.

A late comment, but I actually did watch this series when it was new, and obsessively, repeating episodes multiple times - at first. Now I'm coming back to it and rewatching it on Netflix streaming. I thought it was going to have lost its magic but no, for all its flaws it's still compulsively watchable. Many of the things said here that are contradictory are also true. The writing is pretentious and overwrought, but it's also a haunting and entrancing story. Yes, it's utterly absurd the things that happen, but some of the most basic emotions out of which the story is built - the loneliness and need, the romantic affair - are very real and memorable. Perhaps the relationship between Danny and Scottie is a gay old man-young man cliché, but it's still touching and real. The gay spy theme runs up into dangerous clichés too, but still is highly original. And after all, despite the negative stereotypes some have pointed to, this is a spy story where the gayness is not just a weapon or a liability but simply central, a given, and in that regard, Whishaw as an out gay actor can be proud to have played such a marvelous role in it. Above and beyond any specifics of the story there is simply the fact of Danny as a complex, attractive character, basically a mess, and yet utterly sexy and sweet, the kind of gay young man an old dear like Scottie would be happy to love and protect. Edward Holcorft I'm uncomfortable about. The actor seems so stiff and affected. But that also fits the character of Alex perfectly well: the flaw is in the conception of Alex by the minds behind the series. Jim Broadbent is a consummate pro. But obviously it's Ben Whishaw who makes it all worthwhile and he's touching, real, and as the boyish gay young man, utterly adorable. My excessive fascination with the character of Danny that Ben plays is what kept me coming back over and over, but it was outmatched by my pleasure in Whishaw's authentic and appealing performance, which is one of the best I've seen him in, and he's always good. He's one of the best actors of his generation, some even think the best. There are more mercurial and astonishing ones like Tom Hardy. None so cuddly as Ben though. Sorry I didn't see him as Hamlet.Then Charlotte Rampling comes along and though it's one of her "standard" roles there's nothing standard about her, she's terrifyingly off-putting, in top form. The second, post-Alex phase investigating Alex is very good. In it, everything in the first phase is undercut and mystified, and this is good, through it seems more programmatic and more far-fetched than the first. It's the last phase where things go down the rabbit hole into sheer nonsense. And you cease to be invested in the story as you were early on. Perhaps you knew this was going to happen. But you liked the overwrought-ness, the camp, so much you accepted anything, and the acting and settings and cinematography were so classy, it was okay. Then it's just bonkers, and it's all more or less thrown away.Everything is totally stylized. Some of the editing I find annoying, like the jump cuts and paralleled lines of dialogue in the gay love sequence. It all becomes cloying, too-too. And yet, and yet, guilty pleasure though it may be, it's compulsively watchable. I do not know about the other work of the much talked about Tom Rob Smith. I know director Jakob Verbruggen has done other good things. But in "London Spy," the story eventually deteriorates into the preposterous so you don't care about it. Yet it's made its impression, for the excessive but compelling craftsmanship and the magical acting of Ben Whishaw. For all its flaws this weaves a magic spell and leaves a special memory.

As an old and picky consumer of espionage stories, I was attracted to this series by its title, besides the excellent reviews. After finding myself wasting 5 hours of my life, let me just cry: "don't you dare call this a spy story!" For the review of such bummer, I propose the technique of the "onion peeling", i.e. you remove layer after layer and see what is left at the core. Well, the first layer is the photography, the visuals, the imagery: very sleek indeed; next layer, soundtrack: very cool; then the layer of acting performances: pretty good, as the strong cast was promising. So we have removed all the layers supposed to wrap the core, i.e. the story, the plot, the idea.....ooops, there's nothing less....or, the little that is there is so implausible, so absurd that you would prefer the total absence. So in summary, a lot of window dressing, not much more....