Judi Dench as a spy? Don't go expecting the sort of dangerous behaviour you saw in Red Sparrow, but there are big questions about her past in the first trailer for new drama Red Joan.
Based on the true-life story of Melita Stedman Norwood who (spoiler alert) was exposed as an actual spy, this at first finds Joan Stanley (Dench), living in contented retirement in suburbia at the turn of the millennium. Her tranquil life is suddenly disrupted when she’s arrested by MI5 and accused of providing intelligence to Communist Russia.
Cut to 1938 where Joan (played in her younger version by Sophie Cookson) is a Cambridge physics student who falls for young communist Leo Galich (Tom Hughes) and through him, begins to see the world in a new light. Working at a top-secret nuclear research facility during WWII, Joan comes to the realization that the world is on the brink of mutually assured destruction. Confronted with an impossible question – what price would you pay for peace?
Trevor Nunn directs this one, working from Lindsay Shapero's script, and the cast also includes Stephen Campbell Moore, Ben Miles and Stephen Boxer. Red Joan lands in UK cinemas on 19 April.
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