NATURAL BORN SPY (RIDLEY ROAD)

 

The stories of the anti-fascist 43 and 62 Groups in London have always been ripe for a film or TV miniseries.

The 43 Group involved Jewish ex-servicemen after the Second World War who dedicated themselves to stopping the rise in Britain of Jeffrey Hamm's fascist British League of Ex-servicemen and Oswald Mosley's Union Movement.

The group broke up far right meetings where anti-Semitism thrived and even managed to infiltrate the fascist organisations they targeted.

It disbanded in 1950, believing the fascist threat had receded.

The 62 Group, however, was formed after a resurgence in fascist sentiment following the emergence of Colin Jordan's National Socialism Movement - a precursor of the National Front. 

Based on the model of the 43 Group, the 62 Group's members were mostly Jewish but drew from other immigrant and anti-fascist communities.

It engaged in much of the same covert disruptive activities as its predecessor.

The story of the 62 Group was brought to wider attention by the writer Jo Bloom with the 2014 novel 'Ridley Road' and now it has received even great exposure with a four-part BBC1 miniseries.

Sarah Solemani's adaptation of Bloom's novel centres around the adventures of Agnes O'Casey's Manchester girl Vivien Epstein.

At the start of the miniseries, Vivien is at home preparing to marry Preston Nyman's obnoxious property owner's son Jeremy Klein.

But as they gather round the family dinner table with her mother Samantha Spiro's Liza Epstein, her father Will Keen's David and Holocaust survivor cousin, Julia Krynke's Roza, it is clear there is no spark between Vivien and Jeremy.

Vivien nevertheless dutifully poses for an engagement photo for the Jewish Chronicle but visiting her father's tailor shop, she starts to come alive when Tom Varey's Jack Morris resurfaces with whom she has been having a fling.

When David stumbles upon them, he forbids Vivien from seeing Jack again and insists she must honour the engagement to Jeremy.

Noticing how miserable her cousin is, Roza encourages Vivien to run away to London and track Jack down at a tailor's owned by her uncle, Eddie Marsan's Soly Malinovsky.

When she turns up, she is met by Danny Sykes' evasive Danny Malinovsky who tells her Jack isn't about and that she is one of many girls he has on the go.

Soly, a taxi driver by day and an anti-fascist operative morning, noon and night, realises Vivien is his sister's daughter and keeps a watchful eye on her.

The tailor's in Ridley Road isn't a tailor's but is actually a front for the activities of the underground 62 Group featuring Danny, Soly, his wife Tracy-Ann Oberman's Nancy and Allan Corduner's Rabbi Leslie Lehrer.

A trained hairdresser, Vivien finds work in a salon in Soho run by Tamzin Outhwaite's Barbara Watson whose son Gabriel Akawudike's Stevie, another anti-fascist campaigner, takes an interest in her.

Finding room and board in the house of Rita Tushingham's Mrs Jones, Vivien leaves the salon one day and stumbles upon a rally in Trafalgar Square by the National Socialist Movement.

As anti-fascist protesters including Stevie scream at Rory Kinnear's demagogue Colin Jordan and his Nazi saluting supporters, Vivien spots Jack on the platform.

Confused, she gets caught up in skirmishes between the fascists and anti-fascists and when she goes to see Soly, Nancy and Danny, she learns that Jack is undertaking risky undercover work for the 62 Group - alerting them to imminent attacks by Jordan's gang of thugs.

Soly is determined to send Vivien back to Manchester but when Jack is injured during an unsuccessful attempt by the 62 Group to thwart a petrol bomb attack on a Jewish school that kills a boy, they fear they have lost their intelligence asset and are desperate to locate him.

Vivien volunteers to make enquiries as the rest of the group's identities are known to the enemy.

Dyeing her hair platinum blonde from dye purloined from the salon, she heads to the offices of Jordan's movement pretending to be the fascist girlfriend of Jack's alter ego Peter.

Assuming the name Jane, she immediately charms Jordan who succumbs to her flattery and agrees to take her to a manor where Jack/Peter is recuperating and his Nazi paramilitary group is undergoing training.

Reporting back what she has seen to Soly, Nancy and co, the 62 Group not only thwart an attack on the funeral of the boy killed in the attack but set about trying to get more evidence of Jordan's paramilitary activities which could be given to the Metropolitan Police.

And so Vivien is sent back into the lion's den in a bid to bug Jordan's office. 

The deeper she gets involved infiltrating the fascists, the more Jordan is charmed by her and the greater the risk of exposure.

Following her, Stevie sees her going into the headquarters of the National Socialists and is increasingly convinced she is one of Jordan's devotees.

Hannah Onslow's Elise, who cooks for Jordan's training camp and sports a black eye, is intrigued by Vivien/Jane and at one point even rummages through her pockets, discovering a card for the hair salon.

Meanwhile with Jeremy and his family threatening to end the preferential rent for their business, Jane's parents in Manchester are getting increasingly anxious about finding her and getting her back home to marry him.

Even Mrs Jones, who has fallen for the anti-Semitic rhetoric of Nigel Betts' community leader Mr Burns, snoops around her room and discovers her prayer book - opening up another risk of exposure.

With Irish filmmaker Lisa Mulcahy on directorial duties, all the ingredients are there for a 'Secret Army' style ripping yarn, busting fascists in the 1960s.

So why is 'Ridley Road' so deeply disappointing?

Solemani's adaptation and Mulcahy's direction are very stodgy.

The production values are staid, looking like a typical BBC or ITV Sunday night 1960s period drama.

'Ridley Road,' unfortunately feels like a slightly more edgy episode of 'Heartbeat' or 'Call the Midwife'.

However it falls far short of the menacing atmosphere it really should stir up.

In fact, the tone seems off kilter as Solemani's adaptation dutifully trots out East End Of London stereotypes and fails to deliver the hard hitting drama you would expect.

Agnes O'Casey, the granddaughter of the playwright Sean O'Casey, does a decent enough job but it's hard to make your mark with a vehicle as unsatisfying as this. 

The big romance between Jack and Vivien lacks the fire you would wish and Tom Varey also struggles.

Kinnear, an experienced and subtle actor who has proven before how good he is as a villain, seems oddly disengaged.

Spiro, Keen, Krynke, Onslow, Outhwaite, Sykes, Corduner, Akawudike, Nyman, Tushingham and Betts fail to shake off the sense that this is a comfy Sunday night show.

Eddie Marsan and Tracy-Ann Oberman, it has to be said, turn in supporting performances with a bit more heft.

But they cannot rescue a drama which features clunky editing of archive footage of 1960s London to bolster its period setting and a Scooby Doo escape from a mansion.

There is no doubt the story of the 62 Group is worth telling.

Unfortunately, 'Ridley Road' doesn't tell that story well.

('Ridley Road' was broadcast on BBC1 from October 3-24, 2021)

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