Ted Klein

Let me declare at the outset that I watched only the first two episodes; found them so uninvolving, indeed off-putting, that I’m not going to continue. It was impossible for me to warm to the the main characters in the curiously small cast; they all seemed shallow and selfish, and Kenneth Branagh’s perpetual sunny smirk didn’t help. And it was even harder to sympathize with the alcoholic parasite played by Ronald Pickup, forever cadging drinks and not paying his bills. (I suspect we’re supposed to find him endearing; I found him tiresome and annoying.) While other Europeans were fighting and dying, the Englishmen in this series were clearly enjoying a “good war” in a neutral country, larking around Bucharest, living in fine hotels or cushy apartments (complete with servant), spending their time getting drunk in the posh British Legation bar or vacationing in the mountains or even putting on amateur plays. They seemed a race of cowards and of self-declared conscientious objectors — not a very stirring picture.