The Company

[Michael Hogan]

From TNT:

The Company - Night One

Airdate: AUGUST 5 8/7c

It is January 1954 in West Berlin. Brilliant CIA operative Harvey Torriti (Alfred Molina), code-named Sorcerer, and his young assistant, Jack McAuliffe (Chris O’Donnell), code-named Apprentice, make contact with a man who seeks to defect with his family from East Germany. In exchange, he offers Sorcerer the name of a KGB mole working in MI6. The Sorcerer agrees to the plan and arranges for the defection to take place. Unfortunately, however, the KGB gets wind of the plan and interferes. As a result, it becomes clear to Sorcerer and to CIA counter-intelligence specialist James Jesus Angleton (Michael Keaton), code-named Mother, that it was the MI6 mole who gave away the information. But who that mole is remains unknown....

This critically acclaimed blockbuster from internationally renowned novelist Robert Littell seamlessly weaves together history and fiction to create a multigenerational, wickedly nostalgic saga of the CIA—known as "the Company" to insiders. Racing across a landscape spanning the legendary Berlin Base of the '50s, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the Bay of Pigs, Afghanistan, and the Gorbachev putsch, The Company tells the thrilling story of agents imprisoned in double lives, fighting an amoral, elusive, formidable enemy—and each other—in an internecine battle within the Company itself. A brilliant, stunningly conceived epic thriller, The Company confirms Littell's place among the genre's elite.....

http://www.tnt.tv/series/thecompany/

From the website:

"Compulsive reading from start to finish" —The Boston Globe

"Hugely entertaining...a serious look at how our nation exercises power...popular fiction at its finest." —The Washington Post Book World

"As it happens, this longest spy novel ever written turns out to be one of the best." —Chicago Tribune

"Reads like a breeze...guaranteed to suck you right back into the Alice-in-Wonderland world of spy vs. spy." —Newsweek

TNT and Littell's version of the family jewels?

[Tim Gratz]

I think the "Company" is better than "The Good Shepard."

I briefly perused the book. I do not know why they always have to rewrite history. For instance, the book has Rosselli and Giancana being murdered on the same day.

And the Chicago Tribune is wrong. I suspect "Harlot's Ghost" is longer than the novel "The Company."

Edited August 11, 2007 by Tim Gratz

[Tim Gratz]

I think the final installment next Sunday may briefly cover the Kennedy assassination.

It was in the book (as were the murders of Giancana and Rosselli).

The coverage of the BOP on last Sunday's episode was quite interesting.

I understand you can watch entire episodes at their web site.