Joan Rivers: A Dead Funny All-Star Tribute, on NBC

It is a healthy sign that the entertainment industry can finally pay tribute to Joan Rivers. It only took ten years (and change) after her death. It is obvious why it took so long. Personally, Rivers was a paragon of tolerance, but for her comedy was serious, take-no-prisoners business. Shrewdly, Rivers’ admirers celebrate her “thematic boldness” as well as her genuine stature as a feminist trailblazer in Joan Rivers: A Dead Funny All-Star Tribute, executive produced by her daughter Melissa, which airs tonight on NBC.

Sadly, Rivers passed away in 2014, but she lived to see the release of Rucki Stern & Annie Sundberg’s Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, which helped put her career resiliency into proper perspective. Of course, nobody in this special mentions her victory on Celebrity Apprentice, but the 2010 documentary made it clear her Trump-related triumph helped reinvigorate her career, once again. However, Joel McHale does a funny bit about all the awful news of the last ten years Rivers was fortunate to miss. He also takes several shots at E!, where he met Rivers, which is suitably subversive, considering the network will rebroadcast this very special on June 5^th.

In fact, most of the presenter/tributer/roasters are rather funny, because they adopt Rivers’ fearless spirit. Nikki Glaser and Rachel Brosnahan pretty much go straight for the crotch (with ample precedent). In addition, Brosnahan notably gives Rivers credit as the model for Miss Maisel. Fittingly, Tiffany Haddish (who discovered her Jewish roots in adulthood) gives Rivers credit for serving as her Jewish role model. Of course, it also makes you wonder how the forceful Rivers would have responded to the current alarming surge of antisemitism, especially on college campuses.

Sundance ’20: Ironbark

His father was an officer in the White Army, but Oleg Penkovsky’s military service during the Winter War and WWII earned him the trust and confidence of the Communist Party, allowing him to rise high in the ranks of the GRU (military intelligence). His decision to supply sensitive information about Khrushchev’s plan to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba is considered a crucial turning point in the Cold War. (Plus, in Tom Clancy’s novels, he is also responsible for recruiting the titular double-agent in The Cardinal of the Kremlin.) Penkovsky played a risky game, but his partner was an amateur, Greville Wynne, recruited precisely because he would not act like a spy. Their cloak-and-dagger relationship is the focus of Dominic Cooke’s historical espionage thriller, Ironbark, which had its world premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

In 1960, Col. Penkovsky (codename: “Ironbark”) was technically the chair of the Soviet Committee for Scientific Research, but his real duties were with the GRU. He was therefore privy to military secrets and present for many of Khrushchev’s bellicose tirades. The combination of the two convinced him the First Secretary’s policies represented a grave danger to the Soviet Union and the rest of the world, so he found a very clever method to reach out to the Yanks. Unfortunately, the CIA was particularly weak in Moscow after the detection and execution of their prime source, Major Pyotr Semyonovich Popov. That means CIA Agent Emily Donovan must work with MI6, who rather cleverly recruit businessman Greville Wynne, a sort of small-time Armand Hammer, who had already done deals in captive Warsaw Pact nations.

Since trade and technology fell under Penkovsky’s purview, it does not raise any red flags (so to speak) when Wynne makes contact through official channels. For his own protection, he knows nothing about the intelligence he carries from the GRU officer to Donovan and her MI6 colleagues. Of course, he develops a pretty good guess when the Cuban Missile Crisis ignites. He might not be a spy, but he’s not an idiot either. As suspicion starts to fall on Penkovsky, Wynne agrees to return again, at the risk of his life and freedom, even though his wife suspects him of having another affair.

Ironbark is the best real-life Cold War thriller since Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies—and it just might be even better. It is a highly compelling portrait of friendship and an absolutely chilling depiction of how the Soviet system oppressed and terrorized its people. We see the insides of KGB prisons as well as their ruthless interrogation techniques, all of which are horrifying to witness.

Most importantly, Ironbark still functions as a tense, intrigue-drenched thriller that takes on grandly tragic dimensions during the third act. This is a painstakingly crafted period production, with every little detail reflecting the early 1960s time period (for appropriately depressing effect). Likewise, the cast uniformly look their parts.

As Wynne, Benedict Cumberbatch runs quite a spectrum, from the shallow but likable twit MI6 recruits to the resolute man of conscience risking everything for Penkovsky. Frankly, it looks like he did a De Niro crash diet to look properly malnourished in later scenes. Yet, the Oscar-worthy standout, knockout performance comes from Merab Ninidze (who also co-starred in Bridge of Spies and the once-censored Stalinist allegory, Repentance) quietly commanding the screen as Penkovsky. It is a smart, deeply humanistic portrait that brings all of the Colonel’s inner conflicts to the fore.