Essentially a very good and long overdue concept for a film / miniseries / drama-doc, but struggling to cope with an obviously pitiful budget and a truly awful script.
Most of the cast did their best - but seemed to be on day-release from otherwise more exciting projects, some of them trying too hard to make something of their highly compressed roles and mangled text - the Dennis Wheatly character tottering on the edge of hammy camp.
Its a really strong concept, how British ( and later American ) tech-bods came up with countless concepts to fool, be muddle and confuse the Germans on a shoestring budget - from thousands of plywood aircraft to draw fire away from real aerodromes - to exploding rats and dummy parachutists, its examines the triumph of imagination and creativity over brute force, many of the ideas were original and intriguing - with plenty of humour and human interest, but it was handicapped by an obviously small budget and really small scale direction, in parts it came across as a dramatised educational program from the late '70's.
You never know - perhaps someone with deeper pockets will see this and realise that the foundation of a very good film is in here - after all -' someone' thought Enigma was a good idea, and as 'Downfall' has shown us, you can produce an astonishing quality war film based in the confines of a bunker - so why not one with the 'Back-room-boys'?
