Close to the Enemy

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           I think it took me over a year before I was able to get my hands on the DVDs for this miniseries.  My usual DVD sources just weren’t getting it in.  That’s why, when one of my sources suddenly had Close to the Enemy available, I rushed to have the first disc sent to me.  Then, once I received the disc, I took awhile to watch it.  As much as I wanted to see Close to the Enemy, I thought it might be on the dreary side, and I wasn’t up for dreary.

                Eventually I did pop the DVD into the player and watched the first episodes of this series.  I found that yes, this series is a little dreary, but not nearly as much as I had expected.  The story was also really interesting, which is why once I finished with the first disc, I immediately requested the second, and then the third after that.  Each time I wanted to know what was going to happen next, and by watching each disc so close together, I gave myself much less of a chance of forgetting what happened before.  Trust me, with so much going on, you do not want to lose track of what happened before.          

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                It’s only been a couple of years since the end of World War II, yet England is still dealing with the aftermath.  It just might not be in a way you would expect.  Germans are being brought into the country so the government can use their specific skills to advance both the English economy and war efforts.  If the people they bring in cooperate, of course.  Since these people are not always arriving in England willingly, it should not come as too much of a surprise that not all of them are exactly happy to help England with its plans.  One of those unhappy people is Dieter Koehler (August Diehl), an engineer.

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     Dieter and his daughter Lotte (Lucy Ward) were pulled from their beds in the middle in the night, without any say about what was happening to them.  Since this is their introduction to the operations of the English government, it’s no wonder that Dieter is reluctant to work with it. 

With Dieter refusing to help England in any way, someone must be brought in to convince him otherwise.  That person is Captain Callum Ferguson (Jim Sturgess).

                Only weeks away from military retirement, Callum is given the task of befriending Dieter.  By befriending Dieter, it is believed that he will come around and agree to work with England in its endeavor to build an engine that breaks the sound barrier.  In order to help Callum gain Dieter’s trust; he, Dieter, and Lotte are all put up in a hotel.  A hotel where every move, by everybody, is watched.   

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       Since there are eyes everywhere, it’s not exactly easy to gain Dieter’s trust and cooperation.  Wanting to go home, Lotte screams and cries quite a bit of the time.  Every time she does, Dieter becomes less and less willing to do what the English wants.  To make the situation worse, neither he nor Lotte have any freedom.  They’re not even allowed to go for a walk.  Instead, every move he and Lotte make are watched and monitored.  There are numerous listening devices in their room.  Every word they say is heard.  At least they are until Callum has had enough of his task and goes into a rage.  He rips out every listening device in Dieter and Lotte’s room, tearing the room apart until he finds them all.  It is then that things between Callum and Dieter really start to improve, to the point that, eventually, Dieter reconsiders helping the English.

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    While Callum’s main assignment is getting Dieter to cooperate, there is a lot more going on in the hotel than that.  An old government foreign relations employee, Harold Lindsay-Jones (Alfred Molina), is at the hotel with his ward, Lucy (Ciara Charteris).  Lindsay-Jones has taken a very particular interest in how Callum handles the situation with Dieter and Lotte.  After examining and watching Callum for a while, Lindsay-Jones decides to befriend him, with an ulterior motive, of course.  You see, there is a document Lindsay-Jones wants, and he thinks Callum will be able to get it.  The document is about a meeting that happened before the war.  It involved a German guest, and a plot to take out Adolf Hitler.  Had the members of the meeting believed in their guest’s plan, it’s possible the war could have been prevented all together.  Lindsay-Jones knows of this meeting, and he wants the world to know of it too.  That’s why he needs to get the document about the meeting, so he will have the proof.  To get the document, Lindsay-Jones first need’s Callum’s trust and willingness to help.  What better way for Lindsay-Jones to do that than by using Callum’s brother Victor (Freddie Highmore)?  By giving the difficult Victor a job, Callum will owe Harold Lindsay-Jones.

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          Victor Ferguson was in the war and is not doing well now that he is out of it.  Most likely suffering from what we would now call Post-Traumatic Stress, Victor picks fights with Germans whenever he can, and says pretty much whatever is on his mind, no matter the situation or who it may hurt.  Unlike the fighting, Victor is often repentant about the things that he says.  He knows he should not say them, but at the time he can never seem to stop himself.  The situation is not helped by the fact that Victor does not approve of how well the Germans are being treated.  He is furious that the Germans helping the English are often in better conditions than those who fought for the country.  That’s why, in retaliation, Victor teams up with Kathy Griffiths (Phoebe Fox), a woman doing whatever she can to find, and catch, war criminals. 

                While some would dismiss Victor all together because of the difficulties he has and the situations he gets himself into (he has a tendency to break out of hospitals and be on the run), the truth is, Victor is a very perceptive man.  He is the only one who sees that Callum is also suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress.  His has just taken on a different form than Victor’s, but it is also much more severe.

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     Something else Victor notices is that love has formed between Callum and a woman named Rachel Lombard (Charlotte Riley), the wife of Callum’s best friend.  At least Victor notices how Rachel feels about Callum, because he asks her about it one day while in the hospital.  She and Callum have been having an affair for awhile by this point.  They get together at the hotel, where Rachel’s husband, Alex (Sebastian Armesto), encourages her to spend her time as he works long hours.  They have little to no thought about Alex when they are together, or concern about getting caught.  With both Callum and Rachel hardly ever thinking about the consequences of their actions, it’s no wonder that when all three of them get together that Alex starts to figure out something is going on between his wife and his best friend.  Wrapped up in their own world, Rachel and Callum remain oblivious to the clues Alex picks up.  That’s why when Alex finally does confront Callum (along with the way he does it), it comes as a great surprise.

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         As this is a show immersed in secrets and ulterior motives, I spent every episode wondering when everyone’s true motives and agendas were going to be revealed.  Except for Victor and Griffiths, I never fully trusted anyone to not have something going on in the background.  I suspected each person to be hiding something, possibly even the fact that they were working for the other side.  When I say I suspected everyone of this, I mean EVERYONE.  This included people Callum worked with and staff of the hotel.  I even wondered about an actress who lived at the hotel, as well as Eva (Angela Basset), the singer who reopened the hotel’s ballroom.  Truly, anybody could have been a spy, except for Callum.  Him, I never suspected of being a spy.  Although, I did wonder how he never thought of this possibility of someone else being a spy himself.  But, there were a lot of things that Callum did not think about.  In so many ways, Callum seemed to think he was invincible, which is why he would get so upset when the opposite proved to be true.

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      Even though I really enjoyed this miniseries, I must tell you, I’m not fully sure how I feel about the ending.  Something about it bothered me, but I’m not going to tell you what.  If I did, I would ruin the ending for you.  So, I’ll leave it at I wasn’t sure about it.  You, however, may feel differently about how this miniseries ended.  I would certainly be interested to find out.

                Even with the uncertain (for me) ending, Close to the Enemy is a really good miniseries to watch.  In fact, I’m thinking it may be a good idea for me to watch it a second time.  I have a feeing there may be some things I missed the first time around.