‘What goes on behind the cloaks and daggers’: George Markstein and the dramatization of counterintelligence on British television

Abstract

This article explores methods and approaches by which scholars can examine the representation of intelligence agencies in television drama, arguing that television can be productively separated from literature and film by virtue of its mass audience, its institutional character, and the form of the episodic series, which typically causes its narratives to hew towards the conservative and affirmative. This will be explored through and complicated by a case study of the career of television writer George Markstein and three series which he played a key role in creating and overseeing: The Prisoner, Special Branch and Mr Palfrey of Westminster.