TV Reviews : Maugham’s ‘Ashenden’ Spins a Spy Tale

It will come as a surprise to many that before the great spy novelists--Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, Eric Ambler, John le Carre--there was Somerset Maugham.

Somerset Maugham? It’s largely forgotten that Maugham was the first author to work for a secret service. The great writers of espionage fiction all acknowledge the influence of his fictional agent Ashenden, a semi-autobiographical character inspired by Maugham’s years as a spy in the newly formed British Secret Service during World War I. It was Maugham’s Ashenden stories, first published in 1928, that were the Godfather to Fleming’s James Bond and Le Carre’s George Smiley.

Now, in a terrific series of four one-hour stories, A&E; presents the North American premiere of the BBC production “Ashenden,” with the first two episodes airing Sunday, (5-7 p.m. and again 9-11 p.m.), and the final pair airing at the same times Monday.

“Ashenden” (named after a Maugham schoolmate) is a feast for any television season--sophisticated spy stories told with style and bite.

Starring Alex Jennings and insightfully hosted by Rene Auberjonois, who in one of the stories plays an obtuse, ugly American traveling in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution, the production sweeps you into a langorous/treacherous world of Swiss lakes and German alps, of violence on the streets of Petrograd and murder in the alleys of Naples.

Directed by Christopher Morahan from a screenplay by David Pirie, the production was shot in Yugoslavia, Austria, Hungary and Britain and is exceptionally evocative of another time and place, a post- belle epoque era of clackety trains, cozy outdoor cafes and ornate hotel lobbies.

The supporting cast includes two forceful running characters, memorably performed by Ian Bannen and Joss Ackland: rival secret service chiefs who are identified (prophetically, if you recall your James Bond movies) only by their first initials.

In Sunday’s opening story (“The Dark Woman”), a traitorous actress played with edge and brio by Harriet Walter is coerced into luring her Indian terrorist lover to destruction. In the final and most shattering yarn (“The Hairless Mexican”), Elizabeth McGovern is a mysterious American tourist in Italy and Alfred Molina is her flamboyant assassin.

Along the way, our dogged hero’s sense of duty subtly shifts from idealism to disillusion to disaffection. And in a blistering scene at the end with Bannen’s chilly commander, Ashenden’s reserve explodes and speaks for a future of spies who came in from the cold.