The Company - On behalf of the CIA

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Television series
German title The Company - On behalf of the CIA
Original title The Company
Country of production United States
original language English
year 2007
Production
company		 Sony Pictures Television
length 286 minutes
Episodes 3 in 1 season
genre Action , thriller
idea Robert Littell
production Mikael Salomon , Ridley Scott , Tony Scott , John Calley , Robert Bernacchi
music Jeff Beal
First broadcast August 5, 2007 (USA) on TNT
German-language
first broadcast		 February 20, 2012 on Sat.1
occupation

The Company - On behalf of the CIA (Original title: The Company ) is a three-part US American miniseries about the activities of the US secret service CIA during the Cold War . Their plot is based on the novel of the same name by Robert Littell , which was filmed by Ken Nolan in 2007. On February 20 and 27, 2012, Sat.1 broadcast the miniseries as a two-part series.

action

The Company portrays the struggle of the competing intelligence services, the CIA and KGB, from the end of World War II to the fall of the Soviet Union . The main character is the idealistic agent Jack McCauliffe, who is recruited for the CIA by his rowing trainer after graduating from top Yale University . McCauliffe's best friends at university were Leo Kritzky and Russian-born Yevgeny Tsipin.

McCauliffe's first assignment takes place in post-war Berlin , where he and his friend Leo Kritzky are trained by Harvey Torriti (code name “The Sorcerer”, German: “The Magician”). The two stay in constant contact even after their time in Berlin. Its base is in 1954 in part of a dingy cinema. Yevgeny Tsipin returns to Moscow for his father's funeral, where Pavel Zhilov aka Starik is introduced to him as a family friend. From him he learns that he is a KGB general and that his father also worked for the KGB. Starik tries to recruit him for the Soviet foreign intelligence service because of his language skills and his experience in the USA. During his agent training, he meets Azalia Ivanova and falls in love with her. But Starik confronts Tsipin with a decision - his country or the woman he loves. Yevgeny leaves Moscow and travels to the USA, where he works as an errand boy for Kahn's Liquor Store and also makes deliveries to Adrian Philby in Georgetown .

Meanwhile, an East German agent named Wischnewski is offering the CIA base in Berlin information about a mole within the British foreign intelligence service MI6 . In exchange, he demands a safe passage for himself and his family to the West. CIA chief of defense James Angleton sends orders to Berlin to begin the exfiltration (removal, removal) of Wischnewski and also informs his best friend Adrian Philby, who works as MI6 liaison with the CIA in Washington DC. The help for Wischnewski fails and the CIA base in the cinema is stormed by KGB agents and agents disguised as Berlin police. The CIA agents, including McCauliffe and Torriti, escape after a shooting. Shortly afterwards, Chief of Defense Angleton began analyzing the information and conducting a thorough search within the CIA for the said mole and suspected the leak in the Berlin office. Meanwhile, Torriti tries to uncover the mole with a risky plan. He sends real information, the so-called "contrast mush", in order to locate the traitor. In the meantime, Jack McAuliffe receives secret information from the scientist and Professor Ernst Loffler from Lili, an East German ballerina. Both are also discovered by a leak at the CIA and Jack can no longer save Lili - with whom he has fallen in love.

Through his involvement in other CIA missions (including Operation PBSUCCESS in Guatemala, during the 1956 Hungarian uprising and the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 ) Jack realized that the CIA was infiltrated by KGB agents. Working together with James Jesus Angleton , who was responsible for the counter-espionage department at the CIA at the time, McCauliffe and Torriti try to find the double agent (mole). In the course of the plot, Angleton gets more and more into the search, so that he accuses many agents and even politicians of treason. The CIA leadership advised him to retire early. However, at the end of the series it turns out that Angleton was right on one accusation.

At the same time, the further career of the KGB agent Yevgeny Tsipin is told, with the assignment of infiltrating the CIA and causing global economic damage on behalf of KGB General Starik. The storylines of Tsipin and McCauliffe overlap more and more in the course of the film.

Trivia

The Soviet spy Tsipin uses the code names "Eugene Dodgson" and "Gene Lutwidge" and the code word " Alice in Wonderland ", the title of a book by the British author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, known under his pseudonym Lewis Carroll . Tsipin's KGB command officer Starik enjoys taking photos of young girls, just like Dodgson.

Locations

publication

The Company was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on October 23, 2007 . The latter is only available in English.

Awards

In 2008 he was also nominated for the Golden Globe in the category “ Best Miniseries or TV Movie ”.

literature

  • Robert Littell : Die Company, German, 1st edition from January 1, 2004

Web links