Television
Duty called
James Delingpole
Secret History — Spying For Love (Chan- nel 4, Monday) had been looming over me for ages. Because The Speccer's own Anne McElvoy was one of the programme's con- sultants, it was gently suggested that I might want to review it when it came out. I can't say I was terribly enthusiastic. Not because I have anything against Anne but because I'm stroppy and spoilt and hate being told what to do.
Anyway, I ended up watching the pre- view video after This Life (BBC 2, Thurs- day), which should have sealed its doom because, with the possible exception of Fra- zier, TL is quite the most brilliant thing on television right now. Especially now that Millie — the prim Asian lawyer — is hav- ing an affair with her creepy boss; Egg's opened his restaurant; Anna has started doing serious drugs and is trying to shag anything with a pulse; and Miles has turned into such an unutterable bastard that you couldn't help cheering when Ferdie almost broke his nose because of his brutal indis- cretions .. . What a bummer that half the cast is leaving after this series.
But back to Spying For Love, which con- founded my expectations by being utterly enthralling. If it had been a book, you'd have called it `unputdownable'. And I'm not just trying to suck up to Anne. It con- cerned the 'Romeo' agents recruited in the Sixties and Seventies by Markus Wolf, head of the East German secret service, to seduce West German women. Once the women had grown thoroughly infatuated, the Romeos withdrew their sexual favours until their love-lorn Juliets promised to spy for the DDR. And very effective they were too. Many of them managed to infiltrate the higher echelons of the West German government and security services, working I'll have the survivor, waiter.' as secretaries and passing on to the evil East the multitude of top secret informa- tion that came their way.
`Stupid, treacherous cows!' I'd probably have thought before the end of the Cold War. But with the benefit of hindsight and the horribly moving interviews with three of the Romeos' victims — I found it impossible not to sympathise with their plight. Even the tough cookie who looked like Rosa Klebb came across as likeable and sweetly vulnerable when talking about the adopted, disabled child she'd been forced to sacrifice for the greater good of the communist cause.
Despite having been betrayed by their lovers and having served prison sentences, the question all three women wanted answering was: did their Romeos ever truly love them? To find out, the camera crew tracked down the ex-Romeos — now dishevelled old men living in squalid flats in the former DDR — and tried to interro- gate them. None was terribly forthcoming, though, reading between the lines, you got the impression that, yes, pathetically, they did.
Amid all this suffering, it was galling to see that the man responsible for so much misery had escaped unscathed. suppose you have to admire Markus Wolf's bril- liance in having run a secret service so markedly superior to his Western rival's, but it's really nauseating the way he's since managed to present himself as a charming, reasonable man who was only doing his duty. Interesting guy to have at one's dinner party, I'm sure, but I still think it's about time the Germans got their act together and found an excuse to put him away.
One of the terrible things to have emerged since the fall of the Berlin Wall is just how many ordinary people were pre- pared to inform on their loved ones, friends and colleagues. No doubt we all like to think that, in similar circumstances, we'd never do the same. But I can immedi- ately think of a large part of the population who would: the people who enjoy watching programmes like Police, Camera, Action and Undercover Customs (ITV, Thursday).
These programmes are part of a thor- oughly noisome trend for what a Guardian critic has called 'sucking-up-to-the-authori- ties TV'. Cheap and insidiously nasty, they're largely made up of video footage provided by the forces of law and order to show what a marvellous job they're doing in the battle against crime. The subliminal message is: 'Give us more money and power, please!'
Granted, there are many dangerous idiots on the road. (As Alistair Stewart, egregious presenter of Police, Camera, Action, never fails to remind us: 'Just look at this dangerous idiot! etc., etc.) Granted, also, the undercover customs officers who have to fight against murderous crime syn- dicates like the Cali cartel are sometimes heroically brave. But that doesn't excuse the brown-nosing, pro-authoritarian, Daily Mail-editorial tone adopted by these pro- grammes.
Sorry, but I simply can't share le Stew- art's head-prefect-style exultation over the sort of people who sit by the road waiting to nick otherwise law-abiding folk for speeding. Nor can I summon up an enthu- siasm similar to Undercover Customs' pre- senter Trevor McDonald's for a body which has the power, at the drop of a hat, to shove its hands up our arses whenever we pass through 'Nothing to Declare' at Heathrow. Better, I think, for 1,000 Colombian coke dealers to go free than for one innocent member of the public to endure such indignities. Unless, of course, that innocent member of the public hap- pened to be involved with a sucking-up-to- the-authorities television programme ...
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