Review of Red Joan

Judy Dench is usually in good films, and this is one - 'based on a true story', it's really about Melita Norwood, who passed on information to the NKVD and KGB about Britain's nuclear weapons program in the belief that she was making for a level playing field in world politics, and thereby providing the basis for proper mutual deterrence.

It's well made, with allusions to the Cambridge spy ring. It's not that closely based on the real story, though, and reading the Wikipedia article about Norwood is revealing about the mindset of the people who make films. Unlike the fictional Joan Smith, Norwood was already a commited socialist, not someone who had her head turned by glamorous handsome European Communists. Her dad had published a socialist newspaper, and she'd been involved in politics herself for her whole adult life. And she studied at Southampton University, not Cambridge.  And she studied Latin and Logic, not Natural Sciences - maybe they also wanted to make the 'woman making it in the man's world of science' film too...

Watched on Netflix.