The reason Spies of Warsaw doesn't work particularly well in this adaptation is the difficulty in making Alan Furst's novels play out well in a screenplay. He has written over a dozen of these pre-World War II books, all set in Europe. Most are quite enjoyable. Spies of Warsaw features good acting, pretty good atmospherics. I actually thought I was seeing 1938 Warsaw. But the mini-series attempts to tell Furst's story in 3 hours, over four episodes. And in order to make it more "watchable" to a larger audience than the book had, they emphasize the love story and cheat on the spy story exposition. Furst's books take time to tell and unravel the plot. No getting around it. If you hadn't read the book there was a lot that probably caused you to say "Huh?" Perhaps a 10 hour miniseries would have worked. Maybe 5 hours. But to do justice to Alan Furst's spy novels you just can't compact the story like Spies of Warsaw.
Review of Spies of Warsaw
