Art historian Sir Anthony Blunt (an entirely convincing James Fox) feels confident that his immunity agreement with the government will allow him to continue his rarified life amidst the priceless artworks of the Courtauld Collection and those of HMQ (Prunella Scales) at Buckingham Palace. His quid pro quo with Donleavy (Geoffrey Palmer) is that he provides the authorities with information about others spying for the Soviets in Britain, but their search for the enigmatic “fifth man” is flowing like glue. To that end, the unorthodox Chubb (David Calder) is drafted in to try a new approach which includes using a dubiously attributed Titian paining as a possible code for sensitive information and the threat that immunity does not equal anonymity. Of course the latter scenario would make him continuing with either of his jobs impossible, but then as we observe a conversation between him and his Sovereign, we wonder just who knows what about whom and whether or not that card has already been played at the highest table of all? This is one of my favourite pieces of writing from Alan Bennett as he effortlessly mingles the sinister with the lightly comedic and the high politic in a largely speculative but somehow entirely plausible fashion. Scales employs some obvious mimicry, but she also endows the role of HMQ with quite a degree of intelligence too as the chat with the keeper of Her pictures vacillates cleverly from the transparent to the opaque - all whilst his poor old assistant hides under a chaise-longue hoping, against hope, not be spotted. The facts of who knew what about whom and when aren’t so important here; it’s the games people played either of necessity or convention that I found attractive in this often quite entertaining and entirely British drama.
