TOFFS, QUEERS AND TRAITORS: THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF GUY BURGESS, BBC4, 9pm
JAMES Bond has a lot to answer for. He has made us imagine spies as dashing, valiant sorts, serving the Queen and seducing the ladies but this film shows British spies were nothing like that. At least, Guy Burgess wasn’t.
He’s probably the most famous of the Cambridge spies who betrayed their country in the 1950s and 1960s by spying for the Soviet Union and, just as he was about to be caught, he escaped to the grey safety of Moscow.
Burgess was lured into espionage by boredom, and a feeling of resentment against upper-class British society which, in the 1930s, seemed to be “all sucking up to the Nazis.” Also, as a gay man in a country where homosexuality was still illegal, he felt no obligation to a society which refused to recognise him.
As war broke out, Russia seemed like an alternative society, and he was enchanted by its “great socialist experiment” and we see how a privileged young man from Eton and Cambridge ended up as a Soviet spy.
GONE TO POT: AMERICAN ROAD TRIP, STV, 9pm
THIS new three-part series gathers a group of ageing celebrities and sends them on an American road trip. It seems like a more raucous version of the BBC’s Real Exotic Marigold Hotel.
The group includes Pam St Clement (better known as “Pat from EastEnders”), Linda Robson from Birds of a Feather, the gregarious actor Christopher Biggins, ex-footballer Jon Fashanu and burly ex-darts player and commentator Bobby George.
The gang set off on their trip, the main purpose of which is to assess the pros and cons of legalising marijuana. Each has a medical complaint which they suspect it may ease. So they travel the US states where the drug is legal and take a few puffs to see if it does indeed have a medical use.
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