The Traitor - Pilot

The Traitor arrived on 23 August 1983 as a standalone special, shown inside the anthology series Storyboard, and its business is an interview. Nothing more dramatic than that: an interview between Palfrey and Fawkes, a conversation that ought to be routine. It is not. The standard questions come apart, the answers stop meaning what they appear to mean, and what began as ordinary professional talk turns into something very confusing. That line from the plot summary is the whole point of the piece. The confusion is the story, and it is deliberate, the way a magician's patter is deliberate.

George Markstein wrote it, and Christopher Hodson directed, and the two of them keep the hour intimate and quietly unsettling. Much of it happens in a room, the camera staying close to the two men, the discomfort built from nothing more than the rhythm of the dialogue. But there is no chase and no gunplay to fall back on. The trap is made of words, and it closes slowly around the characters and the viewer alike. You stop being sure who is testing whom. By the end, the actual content of the conversation has gone soft and unreliable.

Alec McCowen anchors it as Palfrey, with Tim Pigott-Smith as Fawkes, Antony Brown as Kilpeck, Gary Watson as Gorsky, Keith Edwards as the American, Georgine Anderson as Mrs Rennie, Ian Barritt as Jordan, Michael Sheard as Dorian, David Gillies as Channing and John Quarmby as Slade. Sheard is worth a nod from generations who know him as Mr Bronson in Grange Hill, or as the doomed Admiral Ozzel in The Empire Strikes Back.

You come away with a distinct feeling that the story was never about who was speaking. It was about the words, and the care with which they were chosen. A strange, confident way to begin a series, really.