Churchill's Secret Agents: The New Recruits
Churchill's Secret Agents: The New Recruits is a five-episode reality show that premiered on Netflix in 2018, about the training of British secret agents, in the (now defunct) Special Operations Executive. For the unfamiliar the SOE was the arm of the British Secret Service specially geared toward sabotage and operating with resistance groups. In other words it would have been closer to the James Bond picture of duties (if not as flamboyant) than the normal intelligence service which was mostly about wheedling informants.
The contestants are put through a series of episodes intended to resemble the declassified format of the SOE course. Obviously they must fudge a bit for dangers which could be tolerated for making an actual agent were not justified for making a reality show. For instance the Woodland Tactics course would have used real bullets instead of paintball despite the chance of a ricochet and the infamous "ladder" (which according to the show, even one of the bravest agents feared more than she had ever feared the Germans) drill, that is climbing up a Cliffs of Insanity with three non-connecting ladders would not have had a safety harness. And of course interrogation drill, which is scary enough on TV, was absolutely terrifying in reality and some agents actually thought there had been a leak and an enemy commando team had kidnapped and drugged them.
The cast (with their Real Life jobs) includes:
Trainers:
- Lt. Colonel Adrian Weale
- Nicky Moffet, Instructor
- Mike Rennie, Military Psychologist
- Rod Bailey, Historian
Players:
- Sammy Ali, retired soldier
- Rohini Bajahj, doctor
- Roger Baris, retired investment banker
- Charlotte Beauclerk, interpreter
- Will Beresford-Davis, paralegal
- Mariama Sebe Camara, counsel administrator
- Debbey Clitheroe, Drama teacher and grandmother
- Rob Copsey, retired paratrooper
- Dan Dewhirst, corporate developer
- Lizzie Jeffreys, research scientist
- Alastir Stanleys, math graduate
- Paul Stone, entertainer
- Magda Thomas, interpreter
- Vicky Wright, former police officer
- Action Girl: Any female contestant, perhaps especially Lizzie.
- Backed by MOD-Whitehall
- Beware the Nice Ones: It is impressive and perhaps a little disturbing how scary quite nice contestants can look.
- Booby Trap: Among the scenes they are taught to put IEDs in dead rats and animal droppings. Apparently they didn't work in real life but kudos for cleverness. In retrospect the first idea had a point for the idea was that people would throw it in the furnace and "boom". In the second place one wonders about mining something someone doesn't want to step in anyway.
- Britain Wins the War: Subverted. Due credit is given to the OSS and to La Résistance in occupied countries.
- Comically Missing the Point: Beauclerk decides not to crawl under barbed wire for fear of getting her hair caught. No doubt the Germans would have been sympathetic if it had been Real Life.
- Confess to a Lesser Crime: Lizzie when under interrogation by the "Gestapo" admits that she is illegally trading in opiates. Of course the Gestapo doesn't care much about that and so Lizzie is congratulated.
- Dare to Be Badass
- Determinator: Many of the tests are tests of determination.
- Did Do the Research: The show is based on the declassified manual of the Special Operations Executive. The contestants wear period garb (which is not quite Gorgeous Period Dress but does look pretty nice). The news they here is stuff they really would have been hearing about like their home town being bombed. Interspersed are the tales of the exploits of real agents.
- Double Tap: In the second episode they are taught to use this.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Subverted. The trainers are probably nicer on the whole than the real ones would have been.
- Humans Are Warriors: These are more or less ordinary people and if they couldn't really do it, they at least sure give the impression that they could.
- Never Mess with Granny Clitheroe crosses one of the coldest lakes in Scotland despite being afraid of water.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Lizzie is a small woman, and plays the role supurbly.
- Putting on the Reich: When a trainer plays an enemy role.
- Screw the War, We're Partying: The reward for passing one of the tests is to be handed several bottles of ale.
- The Spartan Way: Well not like real Spartans or the real SOE but tough enough.
- Spy School
- Tearjerker: When Magda reads the last words of her Aunt who died in the Polish resistance.
- Technical Pacifist: Rohini is nervous around a real gun because she is a doctor and her instinct is to save lives.
- Techno Wizard: Magda tells that her father was a Communications Officer and managed to stay alive for four years (the average for the for underground radio operators could run in weeks according to the show), before the Russians arrested him on suspicion of "whatever."
- True Companions: Whether faked or not, it sure looks so.
- War Is Hell: In the fifth episode they spend time billeting in a freezing barn with nothing to eat but rock hard spam. Magda tells them the comforting thought that her family sometimes didn't have blankets.
- Gruesome descriptions are given of the tortures inflicted on some captured agents.