‘The threat of nuclear annihilation hasn’t gone away’ – the timely return of The Ipcress File

‘I thought I was writing history …’ Joe Cole as Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File. Photograph: Ben Blackall (uk) Nikola Predovic (croatia)/ITV

As the CIA and MI6 try to predict the next gambit of the unstable leader in the Kremlin, Britons flinch at reports of the possible use of nuclear weapons.

But this is 1962; Khrushchev not Putin. ITV’s new adaptation of Len Deighton’s cold war novel The Ipcress File – which was a 60s-defining movie starring Michael Caine as the working-class spy Harry Palmer – was meant to be a period piece for 2022 viewers. But the Russian president’s invasion of Ukraine, and pointed reminders to the world about the size of his nuclear weapons, have given the Sunday night drama a new context.