Operation Mincemeat with Colin Firth an intelligent thriller with a twist of James Bond

REVIEW: Operation Mincemeat (12A)

Upper lips have never been stiffer in this superbly-acted recreation of a crazy-but-true scheme British intelligence cooked up in 1943 to fool Nazi Germany.

Perhaps viewers are aware of the various D-Day ploys, but the lesser-known Operation Mincemeat involved the allied invasion of Sicily and attempts to hoodwink the Axis powers into thinking Greece was their actual target.

A core Second World War unit is assembled of Matthew Macfadyen as grounded ex-RAF Charles Cholmondeley, Colin Firth as lawyer-turned-boss Ewen Montagu, Penelope Wilton as secretarial school head Hester Leggett, Kelly Macdonald as widowed Jean Leslie and Johnny Flynn as Ian Fleming (yes, that one, Bond fans).

Their audacious plan was to dress the corpse of a tramp as bogus “Capt William Martin” with fake plans for the Grecian decoy, give him an all-new back-story and stash the body via submarine into the sea to wash up in neutral Spain and fool the huge network of German spies hook, line and sinker.

To do this they have to convince Churchill (the excellent Simon Russell Beale: "I hate fish!") and his aide Jason Isaacs as Admiral John Godfrey, who has his own agenda regarding Cholmondeley, Montagu and his dilettante brother Ivor Montagu (Mark Gatiss).

Further complicating matters is the relationship between Charles, Ewen – whose wife and family have been shifted safely away from the war – and Jean.

The British are very good at this sort of film-making stuff – see Oscar-winning The Darkest Hour – and director John Madden gets universally good performances out of his stellar cast.

Flynn sort of wraps it up with some narration from Lt Cdr Fleming and there are in-jokes about everyone in naval intelligence writing a novel.

• Any easter eggs? Macfadyen says spooks, a slang word for the intelligence services. Macfadyen starred in the BBC drama Spooks.

Peter Woodhouse