More Than Life At Stake

More Than Life at Stake (Polish: Stawka większa niż życie), also known as Stakes Larger Than Life and Playing for High Stakes is a Polish black and white TV series about the adventures of a Polish secret agent in Soviet service, captain Hans Kloss (real name Stanisław Kolicki, codename J-23), who acts as a double agent in the Abwehr during Second World War in occupied Poland.

Its precursor was a continuing television play of the same name, broadcast live in 1965 by Telewizja Polska. 14 installments were made (aired as part of the anthology series Teatr Telewizji), with the two main characters, the protagonist, Abwehr Hauptmann Hans Kloss, and his key antagonist, SS-Obersturmführer Hermann Brunner, portrayed respectively by actors Stanisław Mikulski and Emil Karewicz. The popularity of the play led to the creation of the TV series; Mikulski and Karewicz returned to portray Kloss and Brunner.

The series was filmed from March 1967 to October 1968. There were 18 episodes, 9 of which were directed by Janusz Morgenstern and the other 9 by Andrzej Konic. The show was very popular in Poland, the USSR, Yugoslavia, and former Czechoslovakia. Re-runs are regularly broadcast on Polish TV.

Both the character of Hans Kloss, and that of Max von Stierlitz, the protagonist of the similarly themed Russian TV series Seventeen Moments of Spring, were allegedly inspired by the real-life exploits of Nikolai Kuznetsov, who had successfully infiltrated Nazi armed forces under the guise of a German officer.