Product Details

• Actors: Nigel Havers, Warren Clarke, David Calder, Michael Gough, Joanna Kanska
• Format: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Acorn Media
• DVD Release Date: March 27, 2007
• Run Time: 211 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000L2127W
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #44,440 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Brewery worker Albert Robinson and financier Jeremy Coward seem like average British guys, until the Russian government claims they're Russian KGB agents defected to England, in Sleepers. This four-episode miniseries stars Vladimir Zelenski as Albert and Sergei Rublev as Jeremy, agents suddenly in danger of losing their anonymity when KGB agent Nina dedicates her work to solving the mystery of their whereabouts. Dry comedy in Sleepers transforms a potentially serious subject into satire about post-Cold War bumbling and bureaucracy, as various secret groups in the UK and the US get a whiff of what the sneaky Russians are up to and begin interfering. Scenes alternating between the KGB, the CIA, and the MI5 make it clear that no one really knows why they're hunting these two retired men, or what threat they pose. Sleepers' humor capitalizes on outmoded Cold War obsessions with keeping tabs regardless of purpose. Many comic moments center on military tracking of an unknown friend of Albert's, named Morris, who turns out to be his daughter's stuffed monkey. --Trinie Dalton

Product Description
The Cold War is over but all the players are still ready for a rumble
As seen on Masterpiece Theatre

Soviet agents Sergei Rublev and Vladimir Zelenski so successfully infiltrated the culture they were sent to spy on in 1965 that they have become more English than the English. Now living as financier Jeremy Coward and brewery worker Albert Robinson, the "sleeping" spies are horrified to learn that, after 25 years, the KGB is looking for them. The hunt also awakens the bumbling bureaucrats of MI5 and their ultra-paranoid CIA counterparts, who work themselves into a lather trying to figure out what the KGB is up to.

The poignancy of the sleepers’ predicament plays out amid a hilarious cross-cultural send-up of the secret agent game. Nigel Havers (Manchild, A Perfect Hero) and Warren Clarke (Dalziel and Pascoe, The Onedin Line) star in this touching human comedy, remembered as one of the best British exports of the 1990s.

DVD SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE cast filmographies and scene selection.

Note: due to music rights, this program has been modified for home video presentation.

See all Editorial Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, April 6, 2007

By	C.A. Arthur (Tacoma, Washington) - See all my reviews

I've waited for years to see this thriller again. It's an example of what BBC was once able to do: create the nearly perfect drama. Everything about this classic is right. The casting is perfect; in a just world, Clarke would have been given many awards. There is much humor. And the spy story keeps your interest from beginning to end. How delightful to see this available. Don't miss it.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To be or Not to be...a Secret Agent Man., May 29, 2007

By	Gerard D. Launay (Berkeley, California) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Like the earlier reviewer, I have waited a long time for this terrific BBC miniseries to come to DVD. It's a very interesting story of two men who were placed by the KGB in Britain as (possible) spies. Their instructions: Melt into the English population as if they were natives. And this they do. They are forgotten. And when they have become entirely British...indeed one of the men is now married with children...they get
an urgent call on their antique Russian radio to "reactivate" as spies.
Panic, panic, panic...as the two men who are friends, try to run from the
Soviet spy machine. They are everything but willing to have anything to do with the Soviets. And one of the persons after them is a beautiful Russian agent. A lot of fun and satire. Don't miss it.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Wrong End of the Stick!, December 17, 2007

By	F. S. L'hoir (Irvine, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This brilliant satire on the bumbling post-Cold-War intelligence services of the UK, the USSR, and the USA, who spend so much time spying on each other that each service wildly misinterprets what the other is actually doing, is not to be missed. The plot may unfold slowly, but it will soon have you laughing out loud. The two KGB sleeper spies left out in the cold of England are Nigel Havers and Warren Clarke. The former, who has taken the capitalistic financial world of London by storm, is thoroughly delightful, and the latter, who has settled down with a wife, three children and a stuffed toy monkey named Morris in a working-class neighborhood in Manchester, is thoroughly lovable. During the previous twenty-five years of their sleeperhood, both have become typically and irrevocably English.

Many of the laughs come from the fine supporting cast (whose names Acorn Media, characteristically, has not provided on the DVD case): the two terribly proper MI5 agents, especially the cheese-paring "C" character who demands that his junior officer give a scrupulous account for every pound and pence he has spent on dinner at Burger King; the beauteous all work-and-no-play KGB agent, without an ounce of humor and the junior spy who loves her but cannot persuade her to go with him to see the latest West-End musical; the spy-master who originally sent the pair to England and has meanwhile landed in a Soviet looney bin; the head of the Soviet trade commission (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) with an American accent that is far more convincing than those of the two brash CIA officers, to whom the British refer dryly as their "cousins." The antics of all of them as they squabble over territory keep the laughs coming one after the other.

Underlying the humor is the serious issue of communication (or lack of it) between intelligence agencies; and historical hindsight indicates that some of the misreading----getting "the wrong end of the stick"----by one side about what the other side is doing, is not so far off the mark. As one of the spies remarks in the film, when something is so wildly improbable, it is very likely to be true.

In any event, "Sleepers" is a keeper!