TV REVIEWS : Engrossing, Detailed Tale of ‘The Secret Agent’

Apologies to John le Carre, but espionage has never been dingier or less romantic than in the BBC’s three-part adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s somber “The Secret Agent.”

Set in 1894, this latest “Masterpiece Theatre” offering stars David Suchet as a lonely, tormented and hapless spy for czarist Russia who lives in London with his wife (Cheryl Campbell) and her retarded brother while also working as an informer for the police. (It premieres Sunday, at 9 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15, 8 p.m on KVCR-TV Channel 24.)

Wearing a thick brush of a mustache, bushy brows and a mat of thinning, twisted hair atop his head as Adolf Verloc, Suchet is almost unrecognizable as the actor seen on “Mystery” as Agatha Christie’s persnickety detective, Hercule Poirot.

Verloc’s career as a spy has been benign and uneventful. So his entire body seems to sag when he’s informed by a Russian embassy official that to remain on the payroll--and perhaps even to remain alive--he must commit a terrorist act that would cast blame on others. The goal is to provoke English authorities into clamping down on revolutionaries regarded by the czarists as a potential threat to their monarchy.

“The Secret Agent” is initially ponderous, disjointed and difficult to follow. Due largely to director David Drury’s adroit blending of poignancy and suspense, though, the story’s seemingly disconnected plot lines begin converging, and by the end of the first hour you are hooked on the interlocking human tragedy and political intrigue.

The lives of Verloc and his wife take dramatic turn after his botched bombing of the Greenwich Observatory, as authorities compete with each other to uncover the truth about what has happened.

“The Secret Agent” dissipates after a shocking twist in Part 3 sends the story off in another direction. And Dusty Hughes’ script never clarifies whether Verloc’s loyalties are with the Russians or the English, or whether he has any at all.

Yet striking performances by both Suchet and Campbell, with the usual support from a clutch of good British character actors, are excellent reasons to keep watching. Another is the way this meticulously detailed psychological drama juxtaposes settings, from the fashionable salons of the upper crust to Verloc’s own squalid shopkeeper’s digs, as the battle between the empowered and the unempowered leads to an inevitable result.