Jan Eklund: When politics becomes a cynical power play we are longing for a perfect spy

Spies, everywhere spies. The old man with explosive secrets have come in from the cold. And new-looking female agents may take the place at his side, at least in the tv series.

Something should it mean that a figure from the cold war days re-emerged in new forms and moves on other fronts. It is no wild guess that the west's ”war against terrorism” received the stunts and the writers want to portray what is happening on the ground in the Middle east – and from the environments, the radical islamists will who want to blow up western cities in pieces.

for the tv series ”Homeland” and ”The looming tower” (the latter is based on Lawrence Wright's sole book ”the al-Qaeda and the road to september 11”). The French angle on the same theme, you can see in the ”False identity”. The environments in Syria, Iran and north Africa have been toned down in the current fourth season. Instead, it is trollfabrikernas and cyberkrigens Moscow that stands in the centre and more current than it can hardly be.

another way to reinvent the genre is to recreate the time before the fall of the berlin wall. Just think of the Russian agentparet Elizabeth and Philip who are living undercover in the original ”The Americans,” or how sensitive and comfortable the phrase director Park Chan-wook filmatiserar John le Carrés intricate novel ”The little drummer girl”. The story is set in 1979 when palestinian terrorists blow up selected israeli targets in Europe and force the Mossad to be a complex operation that begins in Germany and ends in England.