{"id":3759,"date":"2014-11-19T08:10:36","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T13:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3759"},"modified":"2015-01-03T08:12:20","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T13:12:20","slug":"johnny-worricker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3759","title":{"rendered":"Johnny Worricker"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bill<\/a>

Bill Nighy as Worricker (photo: ichef.bbci.co.uk)<\/p><\/div>\n

If you saw the two Masterpiece Contemporary<\/em> thrillers starring Bill Nighy (perfect, as ever), chances are we agree they were terrific. If you missed them, Nighy plays MI5 agent Johnny Worricker, on the outs with his bosses and trying to bring attention to the shady dealings of Prime Minister Alec Beasley (Ralph Fiennes without much hair).<\/p>\n

Needless to say, the Powers That Be don\u2019t approve of Worricker\u2019s activities and are seriously looking for him. In the first of the two dramas shown this month, \u201cTurks and Caicos,\u201d he\u2019s chilling out on the islands when he\u2019s spotted by a CIA agent played by Christopher Walken, with his typical opaque style, and you\u2019re never quite sure who\u2019s who and what\u2019s what. Except that Worricker\u2019s former girlfriend, Margo Tyrell (Helena Bonham Carter), wastes no time realigning her priorities and jetting down to the Caribbean when he needs her. In the second, \u201cSalting the Battlefield,\u201d Worricker and Tyrell are on the run, and doing a pretty good job of it, too, until family ties threaten to flush them out into the open.<\/p>\n

These two productions are followups to 2011\u2019s film with the same characters, \u201cPage Eight,\u201d which lacked only Bonham Carter\u2019s Margo Tyrell. Somehow I missed that program when it was broadcast three years ago. Thanks, Neflix! What makes these dramas so good are the scripts. The screenplays and the direction are by British playwright, theater and film director, and two-time Academy Award nominee David Hare. Says Grantland reviewer<\/a> Chris Ryan, \u201cIf it\u2019s adult contemporary, it\u2019s as good as adult contemporary gets.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you saw the two Masterpiece Contemporary thrillers starring Bill Nighy (perfect, as ever), chances are we agree they were terrific. If you missed them, Nighy plays MI5 agent Johnny Worricker, on the outs with his bosses and trying to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Johnny Worricker","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[269,193,67,104],"tags":[280],"class_list":["post-3759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actor","category-espionage","category-television","category-the-morgue","tag-bill-nighy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-YD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3760,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3759\/revisions\/3760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}