Restless, William Boyd on TV

The problem with Restless, the pseudo spy story flung out fairly glamorously last night and the night before, was that the story is just stupid. Far be it for me to come the storming modernist, but it would seem extremely unlikely for even the most hardline of Soviets not to want American intervention in WW2 in the depths of 1942. They were baying for a second front way after that according to every history book I have come across. Secondly, it is most peculiar to assume that a map is authentically British because it features a spelling mistake, since as far as I know Britain has always been historically considered rather good with maps, especially since the OS. These two issues, plus dramatic implementation of the most ghastly stereotypes and Downtown Abbey characterization, make you wonder where history has gone.
Sure, the fun of history is that you can twist it about, you can stress, for instance, that architect Walter Gropius, known for functionalism, was good in bed until dawn, that is simply an unusual emphasis, but this particular dramatization gave me the creeps, not because the subject was satisfactorily rendered complex, but because it was rendered stupid (see post below).