Spycatcher was a BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 television series, starring Bernard Archard

Bernard Archard

Bernard Joseph Archard was an English actor.Born in Fulham, London, he was a tall, imposing actor with a distinctive face. He was a conscientious objector in the Second World War and worked on the land...

, which ran from 1959 to 1961. It was based on the real-life activities of Dutch counterintelligence officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Oreste Pinto

Oreste Pinto

Oreste Pinto was a Dutch counterintelligence officer . His activities during the Second World War, in which he worked with MI5 interrogating refugees to England, resulted in the capture of eight spies.In 1952, he published two books, Spy-catcher and Friend or Foe?; these led to the 1959-1961 BBC...

 (once called "the greatest living authority on security"), who specialised in the interrogation of suspected spies during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 and had later published his memoirs under the title Spy Catcher. Each episode showed Pinto (Archard) questioning refugees to England from Nazi-dominated Europe, and eventually exposing them as enemy agents (or, on two occasions, concluding that they were genuine refugees).

There was also an earlier BBC Radio series, of 24 Episodes, which covered the same cases in radio-drama form.