Welcome to the Codename guide at TV.com. Codename was a spy thriller about the secretive MI17, a government department operating from the residential hall of a Cambridge College. Eventually the series attained a more international flavour, although its base was always in Great Britain. Codename dealt primarily with the themes of espionage and counter-espionage at the time of the Cold War of the 1960s. The series was developed from Codename: Portcullis, a stand-alone drama broadcast under the Drama Playhouse banner.moreless