Overview: Soviet agents Sergei Rublev and Vladimir Zelenski so successfully infiltrated the culture they were sent to spy on in 1965 that they have become more English than the English. Now living as financier Jeremy Coward and brewery worker Albert Robinson, the "sleeping" spies are horrified to learn that, after 25 years, the KGB is looking for them. The hunt also awakens the bumbling bureaucrats of MI5 and their ultra-paranoid CIA counterparts, who work themselves into a lather trying to figure out what the KGB is up to.

DVD Verdict: Brewery worker Albert Robinson and financier Jeremy Coward seem like average British guys, until the Russian government claims they're Russian KGB agents defected to England, in the well-drafted 'Sleepers.' This four-episode mini-series stars Vladimir Zelenski as Albert and Sergei Rublev as Jeremy, agents suddenly in danger of losing their anonymity when KGB agent Nina dedicates her work to solving the mystery of their whereabouts.

Indeed, one of the great jokes of The Cold War has always been the idea of stuffy, anti-American Soviet spies being sent to the U.S. to penetrate their decadent culture by living as decadent citizens and enjoying their crazy customs like, freedom, money, dancing and Rock music! It made for a great early episode of 'Mission: Impossible' (if I remember correctly) and is the intellectual joke connected to Geoffrey Sax’s 'Sleepers,' now on DVD from Acorn Media.

Unfortunately, as it was when the show debuted on Masterpiece Theater in 1991, the show never quite works, is somewhat all over the place, and even the likable leads on the run; Warren Clarke and Nigel Havers cannot save this messy adventure. To be more honest the characters seem too cartoonish. Perhaps it was that the teleplay by John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch did not develop any points thoroughly enough to make us suspend disbelief about what is happening here? Too bad, because the idea has its possibilities, but hardly any are realized and that alone makes this a curio at best for historians. This is a Full Screen Presentation (4:3) and comes with the Special Features of Cast Filmographies and Scene Selection.