Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Kim Cattrall, Ed Harris, Johnny Flynn, Geoffrey Arend, Rob Benedict, Elena Delia, Kerry Shale, Matthew Marsh, Eric Meyers, Laurel Lefkow, Julee Cerda, Jennifer Armour, Philip Desmeules, Rufus Wright, Nathan Osgood, Dana Haqjoo, Akie Kotabe, Adam Sina, Bijan Daneshmand, Jamie Bogyo, Majid Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy, Wayne Forester, Sarah Alles-Shahkarmi, Isabella Nefar, Walles Hamonde, Natasha Arancini, Hubert Hanowicwz, Will Hislop, Andi Jashy, Arita Sadiku.
Whilst attributed to him after the United States of America was humiliated in the invasion of The Bay of Pigs, whether or not the 35th President of the country, John F. Kennedy, really spoke the damning words of the C.I.A. and his desire to “Splinter (It) into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds” is almost irrelevant, the fact that idea exists to take apart one of the largest offices of spying world-wide is one that is captures the imagination.
It is an office that has had its own levels of ill repute since its formation, its share of success, depending in your point of view, its apportion of blame and failures, and it is a monument to its own levels of extremism in world affairs as its history shows as it props up the propaganda machine of the supposed free will of the capitalist nature of American doctrine and democracy.
Central Intelligence is the history of the agency seen through the personal insight of arguably one of its greatest minds, the truth through the voice of one of its most powerful women operatives, the distinguished Eloise Page, and how from its early incarnation the measure of deceit and manipulation was uppermost in its mind, its core value upended and explained, alluded to in its mystery across ten episodes in radio form.
Starring the ever-elegant Kim Cattrall as Eloise Page, and Ed Harris as one of the big names of American shadow government in the last 100 years, Allen Dulles, this inside story of the agency from its beginnings in 1947 and through events in history such as insisting itself on the world stage in American interests, from Iran to Guatemala, to Hungry, and how those moments are still echoing and shaping international relations to this very day.
The sense of cloak and dagger captured in this dramatic and enlightening series is one that is from the start, out in the open, no secret feels diminished, and as the years go past, as the damage of some causes outweighs the reward, so the staggering events can be seen as more than just evolution, it is the advancement of honest delusion, of the embracement of covert psychology, something that Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, was to take even further in his manipulation of the American people in advertising and the use of his work in the United Fruit Company’s attack on the democratically elected Guatemalan government of the time.
Whilst there are many angles to the Cold War, it is in the creation of the C.I.A. that the listener of the series uncovers truths that are astonishing, and with the authentic voice of Kim Cattrall as the first woman of 20th Century American intelligence, and directed John Scott Dryden, Central Intelligence is a series of high importance, one that deals with the operation of lies, misdirection, and the exploitation of a fear put into the minds of the ordinary American of just who was knocking at the door; who was in control.
Ian D. Hall