Melissa George carries this Anglo-American co-production as Samantha Hunter, a Byzantium operative who crawls back from a staged ambush in Tangier determined to identify the traitor who signed off on her death. The eight-part series, created by former X-Files steward Frank Spotnitz, keeps Sam undercover as a nanny inside the household of Patrick Malahide's venal oligarch Jack Turner, a move that links her present danger to the childhood massacre she has spent decades suppressing. Shot in Wales, London and Morocco, the show pairs BBC One's primetime gloss with Cinemax's taste for bruising close-quarters fights; fight coordinator J.J. Perry turns a hotel corridor into a claustrophobic battleground in the third episode, a single-take brawl that leaves George's knuckles authentically split. Cinematographer Balazs Bolygo favours sodium street-lighting and slate-grey skies, giving the espionage a damp, downbeat texture closer to le Carré than Bond. Composer Ruth Barrett threads Syrian oud lines into the score, nodding to the Damascus back-story that slowly surfaces. Despite solid ratings on both sides of the Atlantic, contractual wrangles between Kudos and Big Light Productions stalled a mooted second run, leaving Sam's final stare into a train-window reflection the last we see of her. The show's curtailed life means Byzantium's web of private spooks, geopolitical puppetry and boardroom assassins never resolves, ending on the same cold note of paranoia on which it began.
Production Details
BBC One / 1 Season / 8 Episodes / 2012
Created by: Frank Spotnitz
Writer(s): Simon Allen
Producer(s): Eliza Mellor
Main Cast
Melissa George as Samantha Hunter
Morven Christie as Zoe Morgan
Adam Rayner as Aidan Marsh
Stephen Dillane as Rupert Keel
Indira Varma as Natalie Thorpe
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Deacon Crane
Patrick Malahide as Jack Turner
Stephen Campbell Moore as Stephen Turner
Lex Shrapnel as Ian Fowkes
Jane Riley as Sam's mother
Manjinder Virk as Simran Bains
