Sixty years after Len Deighton’s working-class spy Harry Palmer swaggered into our lives, the troublemaker is seducing a new generation in the 2022 adaptation of The Ipcress File series starring Joe Cole.

Michael Caine set the bar high when he donned Harry’s tortoiseshell glasses in the 1965 film adaptation of The Ipcress File. Caine’s Cockney accent and disdain for his London spymasters were the perfect antidote to suave, clubbable James Bond.

In honor of Deighton’s classic tale of delinquent spies, mind control experiments, and kidnapped scientists, SPYSCAPE went behind the scenes of the Ipcress File series.

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1. Harry Palmer, cynical spy‍

Cole plays British Army sergeant Harry Palmer in 1960s Berlin, a city divided by a cinder block wall and a Cold War. Harry is arrested for doing dodgy deals on the black market and given a choice: languish in a military prison or work for Army Intelligence. It's a tantalizing plot twist, but is it a realistic scenario? Very much so, it seems. For decades, intelligence agencies have recruited unwilling or unsuspecting spies using a psychological tool known as MICE - money, ideology, coercion/compromise, and ego - all key weaknesses. With a prison sentence ahead, Harry appears ripe for exploitation.

2. The mean streets of … Liverpool?‍

While The Ipcress File is set in London, Berlin, Beirut, and on a fictitious Pacific Island, part of the series was actually shot in Croatia, a country of versatile geography and low production costs, where Emmy Award-winning director James Watkins also filmed McMafia. Croatia doubled up as Helsinki, Beirut, and a fictitious Pacific Island atoll where the Americans tested nuclear weapons. As for the London scenes, they were filmed in the streets of Liverpool, England (home of The Beatles). The crew reportedly thought London looked too “clean” to represent its 1960s self!
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3. Mind-control experiments‍

Deighton said his writing was influenced by a controversial psychology book, Battle For The Mind by William Sargant, which he read several times. Sergeant’s book explained basic techniques used by evangelists The author also noted he was friend David Stafford-Clark, a medical officer for both Britain’s Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force.

4. Jean Courtney’s promotion‍

Jean Courtney (Lucy Boynton) is promoted from a secretary in the novel to a worldly intelligence officer with a steel-trap mind and Audrey Hepburn-inspired wardrobe in The Ipcress File’s six-part series. But were women even considered for international fieldwork in the 1960s? If Sheila Fennessy is anything to go by, the answer is yes. The one-time agent for MI5 - the UK’s domestic spy agency - was a secretary who knew how to crack locks and was posted to the British colony of Trinidad.

5. Modernizing Harry Palmer‍

Back in the 1960s, unmarried American women couldn’t easily get credit cards or serve on juries let alone expect workplace equality, however. Britain didn’t even pass its Equal Pay Act until 1970 so Joe Cole found himself constantly struggling throughout the shoot to bring Harry Palmer into 2022: "It was this constant battle of trying to make him not sound like a d**k.” 
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6. The Ipcress File’s shadowy spy agency

Harry Palmer and his handler Major William Dalby report to a spy branch described vaguely as a ‘new’ division with links to Britain’s Ministry of Defense known. Did such rogue spies and spymasters really exist, however? It appears so. Brixmis was one such agency operating in East Germany before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Lock picking? Speeding? Smashing vehicles? It was all part of the adventure in the no-rules, cat-and-mouse spy game in Cold War Berlin.

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7. Glasses make the man‍

The 2022 series opens with an out-of-focus shot that finds Harry fumbling for his glasses - a nod to Michael Caine’s 1965 film. Caine’s specs were so famous they were auctioned off for $8,700 in 2006. A duplicate pair didn’t suit actor Joe Cole, however. The 33-year-old spent hours searching for the right prop to transform himself into Harry: “The glasses were massive in getting into character… I remember going into Cutler and Gross in Knightsbridge. I tried on every pair in the shop and there was only one pair that worked. As soon as I put them on, I said: ‘These are the ones.'”

8. A new CIA officer joins the team

Lucy introduces an African-American contact during the series, CIA agent Paul Maddox (actor Ashley Thomas), a new character who may not be as trustworthy as he first appears. Maddox is portrayed as a black man constantly trying to prove himself in a white-dominated agency, which begs the question: How common were African-American officers back in the ‘60s? Ex-CIA officer Darrell Blocker said there were no racial or ethnic minorities among the division chiefs around 1990 when he started. ​Just over 25% of US intelligence agency staff are now classified as racial or ethnic minorities.

9. The working-class spy‍

Deighton’s book was published nine years after Ian Fleming's first Bond novel Casino Royale, and a year after John le Carré's George Smiley appeared in Call for the Dead. It was a marked change from the upper-class spies. Deighton attributed his success to ‘ignorance’: “Had I started writing after a creative writing course or a university degree in English Literature, Ipcress File would have been a more conventional book. As it happened, it started as an account of a man wandering through Soho, London as I did every day.”

10. Harry Palmer’s 60-year legacy may not be over just yet

The 2022 series may not be a one-off. There are already rumors that a second season is being considered and there’s plenty of material for scriptwriters to shape. An incredible 10m copies of Len Deighton's novel The Ipcress File have been sold since 1962 and Harry stars in at least three other Deighton books. (Debatably, Harry also appears in Spy Story and Catch A Falling Spy but isn’t named.) Michael Caine starred in five Palmer films in all: The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, Billion-dollar Brain, Bullet to Beijing, and Midnight in St. Petersburg. SPYSCAPE fans can even hear his debrief.