The Ipcress File

The Ipcress File is a British cold war spy thriller television series loosely based on the 1962 novel The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton. Written by John Hodge and directed by James Watkins, it stars Joe Cole, Lucy Boynton and Tom Hollander. It was first broadcast at 9pm from Sunday 6 March to 10 April 2022 on ITV. The entire series was available for streaming, with commercials, on ITV Hub after episode 1 was broadcast. Within a week the full series was also available, commercial-free, on BritBox in the UK. Premise In 1963, spy chief Major Dalby gives small-time crook and black-marketeer Corporal Harry Palmer a way out of Colchester Military Prison by offering him a job as an intelligence officer in his small but influential Whitehall security unit, WOOC(P). The unit's investigation into a missing British nuclear scientist expands into a case of international espionage which is documented in the contents of the eponymous "IPCRESS File". WOOC(P) is a (fictional) civilian department of the British intelligence community, reporting directly to the Cabinet. In the novel it is described as "one of the smallest and most important of the intelligence units" but it is never stated exactly what the initials stand for, only that it is ‘provisional.' In episode one of the series, Dalby states that the unit is called ‘War Office Operational Communications (Provisional)’ and enjoys the fact that both MI5 and MI6 are envious of it.