Spooks – Series 4

Over the course of the past three seasons, MI5 has lost essential members of the team – Helen (tortured to death), Tessa (who ran phantom agents), Tom (decommissioned), Zoe (forced into exile), Danny (killed by an Iraqi extremist). Fortunately, the new recruits so far have been excellent, too – Sam Buxton, Ruth Evershed, Adam and Fiona Carter, Zafar Younis. It’s a great test of our loyalty as viewers when our favorite characters are continually replaced, but it has worked wonders thus far. Now, the team is grieving Danny’s death, and in the middle of the funeral service a bomb explosion hits central London. An environmentalist group called Shining Dawn threatens to set off explosions every ten hours unless and until their leader Malcolm Monroe is released. The first lead is shot dead after giving merely half a clue to the team. Ruth visits a sympathizing Professor Curtis, and spots a man with a gun in his garden, while trying to convince him of the error of his ways. Following up on a few more clues, their next lead gets a text message to clear out before her place is raided. Clearly there’s a mole inside MI5, but who? The Grid (their headquarters at Thames House) is overrun by newcomers, including CIA agents, lead by Richard Boyd, and a British agent formerly working in Washington, called Juliet Shaw.

With just minutes to spare the team trace the location of the next bomb in a train station and are able to disengage it in the nick of time. They have bought themselves another ten hours to bring down the operation. Then things go awry, as the terrorists take Zafar, and Adam is faced with losing another colleague on his watch. He’s able to make some makeshift firebombs and forcefully get the whereabouts of the next bomb. Again it’s defused within mere minutes before going off. Now they have an eye-witness, Natasha, who saw one of the bombers at the train station. Meanwhile, Harry offers his resignation to the Home Secretary, forestalling any attempts by Juliet to blackmail him with their shared past. Is she the mole? Or is it that American agent Boyd, who seems unpatriotically disengaged. (Mind you it’s 2005, and Dubbya Bush is still in office.) With Tash’s help, the team are able to trace the bomb-maker. It is Juliet who informs the team that the same man was once arrested in the U.S., but let go, by none other than Boyd. With his cover blown, Boyd chases after Tash, while the team tries to decode the password on the next bomb, with help of Professor Curtis. After all is safe, Boyd and the bomb-maker are arrested, Juliet is promoted to National Security Coordinator.

The remainder of the fourth season deals with issues such as racist violence promoted by the far-right extremist party The British Way; an illegal immigration ring from Istanbul involved with smuggling Al-Qaida terrorists into Britain; the death of a former MI5 agent; a released terror suspect linked to a thwarted attack on Heaththrow, maintaining contact even from within prison; an act of treason to safeguard the public health service from being taken over, stripped and sold off by a Russian billionaire capitalist; pressure from the CIA to share information about potential terrorists; and the discovery of evidence that the British government planned Diana’s death. Exciting as the action is, it is the personal drama of the lead characters that make this series so enjoyable. Adam and Fiona continue to struggle maintaining a healthy family life for their son. To make matters worse, their past in Syria is coming back to haunt Fiona one day, when a Syrian woman recognizes her on the street, and then later when the Syrian Foreign Minister visits London. For his part, Adam is forced to throw a terrorist off a balcony, to shoot an innocent bystander in the leg with a crossbow, to stand by watching the assassination of the Bahar crown prince. But worst of all, he has to watch his wife die in his arms after she got shot by her Syrian double-agent ex-husband who was presumed dead.

Harry continues to grapple with the responsibilities of his job, particularly where to draw the line between defending national security and protecting the innocent. His new superior, Juliet Shaw, is much more ruthless in that respect, something that becomes very clear when a former MI5 agent is assassinated by her officers when it transpires he is about to publish a tell-all memoire on the internet. In another instance, Adam quips to a troubled Harry, “We’re spooks, Harry, not philosophers.” Juliet also has no qualms about sanctioning the elimination of a foreign government official. “Hardly a legitimate government,” she retorts. Harry at one point made a judgment call. Unfortunately, he was wrong. He released a man demanded by the U.S. for extradition, feeling there was insufficient evidence that the man was dangerous. But then two surveillance officers were killed. Harry had to be taken off duty. He is, however, reinstated even before a disciplinary meeting. Then there is a new recruit, Jo Portman, whom Adam stumbled upon on one of his stake-outs, and then helped save the life of one of his charges. A little contrived, in that she has no formal training to be a spy. Fortunately, they don’t downplay her ignorance and even make a show of all the background reading she needs to catch up on. Still, a great series – it comes with the Cricket’s chirping recommendations.