Based on the 1965 Michael Caine espionage thriller of the same name, “The Ipcress File” on AMC+ (by way of ITV in the U.K.) keeps the Cold War action set in the early 1960s. Harry Palmer is a young Brit with clever instincts but not much spy experience, and he gets roped into a saga that involves a kidnapped nuclear scientist, pushy American interests and a brainwashing scheme that could lead to an assassination. Witty and occasionally terrifying, the series moves at a good clip and is stylish — it retains those thick-framed eyeglasses that are so iconic to Caine’s original performance.
In the ‘65 film (adapted from Len Deighton’s 1962 novel), Harry Palmer emerged onto the pop-cultural landscape as the anti-James Bond, and this six-episode version sticks to that approach with sleepy-eyed actor Joe Cole (“Peaky Blinders”) stepping into the Caine role. He’s a regular bloke with a smuggler’s talents, which lands him behind bars after he’s busted for running booze while serving as an army corporal stationed in Germany.
But his craftiness and knowledge of the landscape beyond the Berlin Wall make him useful to the task at hand — retrieving a kidnapped nuclear physicist — at least as far as certain parties within British intelligence (neither MI5 nor MI6, but some hush-hush operation under the Ministry of Defense) are concerned. So Harry is sprung from prison and suddenly he’s a spy, working alongside a young woman named Jean Courtney (Lucy Boynton), an icy blonde who has far more experience in all things espionage.
