Florence Pugh plays an aspiring English actress who gets caught up in a web of lies in The Little Drummer Girl, a six-part BBC One series adapted from John le Carré’s 1983 novel. It follows Charlie Ross as she’s recruited by Mossad to infiltrate a Palestinian terrorist cell, and it spends six hours doing little else. That restraint is the point.
The series is built on slow reveals and deliberate tension, not explosions or chase scenes. Charlie is a blank slate at the start, a young actress who meets an intriguing stranger in Greece and lets herself be drawn into a scheme she doesn’t fully understand. Michael Shannon plays Martin Kurtz, the Mossad agent who recruits her, and he gives the performance the most room to breathe. Alexander Skarsgård plays Gadi Becker, the Israeli officer who trains her, and his scenes crackle with menace and frustration. Kate Sumpter, Simona Brown, Clare Holman, Gennady Fleyscher and Amir Khoury round out the cast as various members of the operation and the cell Charlie’s meant to bring down.
Trailer, via amc+.
A Long Con
The premise is simple: Charlie is asked to pretend she’s a terrorist and get close to the cell. The execution is anything but. The show takes its time getting to the point, and that patience pays off. The early episodes are about establishing trust, building a cover, and watching Charlie learn the rules of a world she never wanted to enter. Pugh holds the center of the screen through it all, and her performance grows sharper as the series progresses.
Shannon is the engine underneath the whole machine. His Kurtz is patient, calculating and genuinely fond of Charlie, even as he manipulates her completely. Skarsgård’s Becker is the opposite: sharp, impatient and constantly pushing Charlie toward danger. Their scenes together are the best in the series, a tense dance of control and resistance that defines the show’s central relationship.
“Her eyes were wide open.”
That line, spoken by Shannon’s character about Charlie, sums up the show’s entire approach. She sees everything coming, and she can’t look away.
Six Episodes, One Scheme
The series is a single, long con, and it plays like one. Each episode adds a layer to the deception, and the audience is kept guessing about who knows what until the very end. The show trusts its viewers to sit with uncertainty, and it rewards that trust with a finale that pulls the rug out from under everyone involved. There’s no sudden twist ending that feels cheap. The resolution earns its place after six hours of careful setup.
The pacing is the show’s biggest strength and its biggest weakness. The middle episodes drag in places, and some viewers will find themselves checking their watches during stretches where nothing much happens. But the show never loses its grip on the emotional core of the story, and that counts for a lot.
The Cast Holds It Together
Pugh carries the weight of the series, and she does it with a quiet intensity that keeps Charlie sympathetic even as she makes choices that would break most people. Shannon and Skarsgård support her from either side, giving her a push and a pull that keeps the tension alive. The rest of the cast fills in the world around her, each character a small cog in the larger machine of the operation.
The supporting roles are smaller but no less important. Sumpter, Brown and Holman play the people Charlie depends on, and their performances ground the show in human feeling. Fleyscher and Khoury play the cell’s leaders, and their scenes with Pugh crackle with menace. The show moves between the Israeli side and the Palestinian side without losing focus, and that balance is one of its strengths.
Where It Falls Short
The show isn’t perfect. Some of the middle episodes feel like filler, and a few scenes could have been cut without losing anything. The political context of 1979 is established but never fully explored, which leaves some of the stakes feeling abstract. And the show’s director’s cut, released in 2019, suggests there was material left on the cutting room floor that might have tightened the final product.
But those flaws don’t undo the whole. The show’s central engine — Pugh’s Charlie, Shannon’s Kurtz, Skarsgård’s Becker — is strong enough to carry the weaker stretches. The final two episodes snap the tension shut with a force that makes the slower middle feel earned, not wasted.
The Bottom Line
The Little Drummer Girl is a demanding watch, but it’s also a rewarding one. It asks for patience and delivers payoff. The show is at its best when it’s slowest, letting the tension build through quiet conversations and long silences rather than quick action. That approach won’t work for everyone, but for those willing to sit with it, the payoff is real.
Pugh’s performance is the reason the show succeeds. She plays Charlie as a woman who’s both clever and naive, capable and fragile, and she never lets the character become a prop for the plot. Shannon and Skarsgård give her the right partners, and the rest of the cast fills in the world around her with care.
The show drags in places, and it doesn’t always land its political points with precision. But the central relationship between Charlie and Kurtz, and the slow-burning tension it generates, is a masterclass in controlled storytelling. It’s a show about trust, betrayal and the cost of doing what you’re told, and it doesn’t flinch from showing how high that cost can be.
Score: 7.5 of 10.
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