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Codename: Icarus

MORE COLD WAR kicks for kids, as assorted public schoolboys discover their school is being bankrolled by a secret military thinktank, who are meant to be the Russians, or possibly the Nazis, or maybe just the evil inside all of us.

6 Comments

6 Comments

  1. Selvy

    January 9, 2010 at 2:59 am

  2. gobsmacked robin

    July 5, 2014 at 7:31 pm

    I remember watching this as a kid. The baddy’s sidekick looks the spit of Clive Sinclair!

  3. Glenn Aylett

    March 1, 2020 at 2:48 pm

    It starred Julian Glover as the headmaster, around the same time as he played Christatos in For Your Eyes Only, and some sinister East German professor, who could have been a Bond villain. I can remember it being about some kid who is considered intelligent but very lazy and bored with his comprehensive being recruited by this school and brainwashed.

  4. Glenn Aylett

    March 1, 2020 at 6:01 pm

    Correction, the headmaster wasn’t played by Julian Glover in Codename Icarus, so let’s scrub that one all together, but the series was one of those you wouldn’t get now, a spy series aimed at older children that adults would enjoy too and a rare beast for the BBC then, something made largely on location, which means it hasn’t aged much.

  5. Joanne

    April 10, 2020 at 9:29 pm

    I watched this on You Tube last year, having watched it when it was originally on and also read the book when I found it in my school’s library. Far too serious and intelligent to be screened as a kiddies drama today, it is more suited to a more grown up audience. Which shows how dumbed down drama has become for both adults and children these days.

    • Ben

      April 29, 2023 at 9:41 pm

      There was a book?! The TV show must have made a big impression on me, as I could remember whole chunks of it thirty years later, when I had forgotten much of what I had learned and my actual school. Rewatching it on YouTube was a joy; it holds up well. Gordon Kaye’s camp cameo is a highlight.

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