Spooks – Series 5

When the fifth season of BBC spy series Spooks picks up, we are exactly where the fourth left off. Some deranged woman, who is plotting to kill the Royal Family, has seriously shot Adam Carter, while Harry Pierce is looking around in a panic. When Adam regains consciousness in a hospital the news is all abuzz about a violent terrorist attack on Britain’s fuel deposits by an al-Qaeda splinter group. With news outlets spreading fear that the country is becoming ungovernable, MI5 (national security) is forced to co-operate with MI6 (foreign intelligence), and the Prime Minister’s son’s life is threatened. While demands increase for new anti-terrorist legislation that would further curb civil liberties, a conspiracy to overthrow the government is well under way to establish a dictatorship. The coup d’état involves media mogul Millington, bucktoothed petrol magnate Jocelyn Myers, some colluding Cabinet Member, and none other than Harry’s MI6 counterpart Michael Collinwood. Of course, the threat is averted in the nick of time. Even detailed synopses won’t be able to do justice to the complexities of every episode’s plot.

Unfortunately, though understandably (as the season first aired in 2006), al-Qaeda remains very much on the forefront throughout the season. Because of that focus, though, episodes can easily become predictable and lose in entertainment value. Other topics, however, are included: a summit on African poverty that risks being torpedoed by a major industrial deal between America and Japan; the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Oliver Mace (Tim McInnerny), who appears involved in the execution of seven imprisoned terror suspects; the Mossad (Israeli Intelligence) plotting to de-rail a British nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia; a Christian group hoping to provoke Armageddon by attacking the Muslim community; the transportation of a Serbian war criminal to The Hague; and environmental terrorists aiming to flood the greater London area unless a secret document is made public proving that Britain is collaborating with the U.S. to benefit economically from the catastrophes of global warming – rather than attempting to stem the tide. Nevertheless, this season overall has lost some of its previous intelligent excitement. At times I was even considering to stop watching the show altogether.

Rather than the various plotlines, the strength of the show has thus far been the dynamic between the characters, their moral dilemmas – especially in face of governmental expectations – and their emotional turmoil. That has changed quite drastically this season. There were a couple of fascinating moral judgment calls our spooks had to make. In one of those moments MI5 has to decide whether to protect one of the African heads of state from assassination, when they learn that he intends to go on an ethnical cleansing spree in the north of his country. The main story arc, though, was Adam’s inevitable nervous breakdown from post-traumatic stress disorder. He witnessed the assassination of his wife Fiona; he nearly got killed himself; someone else got shot and died in his arms; he struggles being a good father for his son; out of loneliness and escapism he falls for his son’s nanny; she confronts him about his secrecy and lies; one of his childhood friends is suspected of being a traitor; he breaks down twice during mission. No wonder his operational fitness is seriously questioned. Yet, the emphasis on this story arc (sometimes compelling, sometimes tediously predictable) and draws our attention away from the other characters.

In the past, when main characters were killed off or forced to leave MI5 their replacements were similarly interesting, or even more so. Now we’ve seen Ruth Evershed disappear, the Senior Intelligence Analyst, one of my most beloved characters. She si wicked smart, recognizing literary references at the drop of a hat, but socially awkward. She and Harry were on the brink of romantic intimacy, when she is implicated in someone’s murder whose subway suicide she witnessed. In order to protect Harry, she had to fake her own death. Ruth is briefly replaced, but that character is murdered the next episode. We barely get to know Field Operative Jo Portman (the excellent Miranda Rainson), although there was a nice bit in the beginning when she was able to foil an attempt to take the PM’s son hostage. Likewise, we see frightfully little of the inner feelings of her colleague Zafar Younis, even though he witnessed the deaths of several innocent people right before his eyes.

The team loses one of their most valuable members, Colin Wells (their Technical Specialist), just as he had discovered a plot of a mid-air collision of two passenger planes over the city of London. He is never replaced. Although the National Security Coordinator, Juliet Shaw, is paralyzed from the waist down by a car explosion, she occasionally reappears in her function – seemingly recuperating fast. Adam’s wife Fiona Carter is replaced by former MI6 Operative Roslyn Myers (the petrol magnate’s daughter), who has an air of cold rigidity and apathy about her. She enjoys telling other people what to do, but is fully capable of throwing a few flying kicks and punches around when necessary. I found it difficult to sympathize with her. It’s only by the time of the season’s finale that we establish something of a rapport. But then she is left drowning with Adam in a flooded tunnel. Cliffhangers notwithstanding, I doubt that Adam Carter will survive for much longer. Nor is the Cricket sure he’s curious to find out, though the other critics are still raving about the show.

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.

Spooks - Series 3

Spooks picks up right where we left off last season. Tom Quinn has been set up for shooting the Chief of the British Defense Staff. Backed into a corner Tom shot the head of the MI5 counter-terrorism department, Harry Pierce. He seemingly swam to his death, but goes undercover to salvage his reputation. Now MI5 is under investigation by this pompous Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Oliver Mace (a guest appearance by Tim McInnerny who we know and love as Percy and Capt. Darling from Blackadder), with the alleged approval of Downing Street to clean up the branch for supporting a rogue officer. Fortunately Harry arrives in time from the hospital before the real bloodletting started. He brings in a charming chap called Adam Carter from MI6 who’s with Danny that they need to prove Tom’s innocence. On his part, Tom has been following Herman Joyce, the man who set him up. Tom shoots him and drops his dead body in front of Thames House (MI5 HQ). As Joyce was supposed to have died five years ago, the team realize Tom was right that Joyce had set him up. Mace pressures CIA liaison Christine Dale to meet with Tom. Christine is wired when Tom tells her Danny and Zoe will pick up Joyce’s wife Carmen (who doesn’t yet know her husband has been killed) at her hotel. Mace’s goons are all over the hotel, forcing Zoe and Adam to cause a distraction, but Carmen walks away. They track her to the safe house where she believes she will meet Herman. Instead Adam knocks on the door and not only talks her into confessing they set up Tom and why, or why they chose the target, but also into committing suicide. Tom’s name has been cleared!

This season the MI5 team’s operations include recruiting a noble-price winning chemist to lure terrorists who are trying to create an atomic bomb; protecting a controversial novelist living under a fatwa, who is friends with a Pakistani double agent; the kidnapping and subsequent killing of the U.N. Chief Negotiator in Middle East Peace Talks; the assassination of a scientist selling biochemical information to North Korea; the murder of a Turkish Mafioso running financial operations for al-Qaida; threats of computer hacking that poisons medicines, wipes bank accounts, ans disrupts traffic lights; the kidnapping of a celebrity couple’s baby, which according to Mace is so high-profile it’s an issue of national security; a mercenary who stole a laser target missile designator set to bomb a target in London; and Iraqi extremists plotting to kill the Prime Minister.

Even more so than before, this season delves deep into the characters and their interpersonal relations. Because Christine is in love with Tom, she was deeply distraught when she was forced to reveal his plan setting up Joyce’s wife. Tom feels deeply betrayed – even after she admits she couldn’t stand the strain and resigned from the forces. While he’s himself questioning the morality of MI5’s work, Tom’s colleagues are worried about his emotional stability. They find he’s having a crisis of conscience, which undermines his authority. When he demands they abandon an operation to save a man’s family life, Harry has him decommissioned. Nonetheless, like Tom, others, too, get personally involved in operations. Harry himself was deeply troubled when he feared his daughter Catherine was involved with extremist Israelis. On her part, Zoe catches a photographer on one of her stake-outs, who flirts with her so hard, she can’t resist. Two episodes later he already asks her to marry him. But then his brother steals a photo and takes it to some newspaper, telling them that his brother is engaged to a spy. With everything based on the trust that he would never tell anyone, Zoe has to break it off. Zoe’s later charged with conspiring to murder Turkish Mafioso Celenk and in the process causing the death of a British undercover police officer. Evading ten years imprisonment, she has to leave for Chile.

Adam (an excellent addition to the cast) becomes emotionally involved and distressed when a close friend is murdered. Adam’s wife Fiona at first also works at MI6 (the British foreign intelligence service). He finds it increasingly difficult to maintain a regular family life. But when she is recruited at MI5, she becomes a target for Iraqi extremists who hold her hostage. Adam then has to make every effort to save her life. After Danny witnesses the assassination of one of his charges, he understands better what Tom did, quitting while he was still ahead. While tailing Harry’s daughter Catherine, he has a fling with her and resents it when he has to break his cover. His unrequited feelings for Zoe, moreover, make him unreliable at work, and he becomes bitter after she is forced into exile. In the final episode, he is killed by an Iraqi extremist! During her surveillance work, Ruth has been listening in on conversations of a man who seems perfect for her, but when she meets him he doesn’t ask her out again. When a computer expert from the Government Communications Headquarter invites her over, she realizes he’s none other than the computer hacker responsible for the chaos he was supposed to help them solve. That shady JIC chairman, Oliver Mace, continues his efforts to thwart MI5’s operations as best as he can – except that the team keeps outsmarting Mace. With such human depth, intelligent and fast plot twists, and tense action scenes, I find this show thoroughly engrossing. (I just don’t recall there were as many extreme close-ups in the previous seasons.) I can warmly recommend the show.

Spooks - Series 2

In the second season of BBC spy series Spooks Tom, Zoe, Danny and the rest of MI5 are dealing with terrorism of various forms – Irish, Serbian, Islamic –, war criminals, computer hackers, anarchists, money laundering, Russian organized crime, a visit from then-president Bush, petty thieves (except they stole the MI5 bossman’s suitcase that contains highly classified information), arms deals, military insurrection, uranium transport, a Columbian drug cartel moving into London with the protection of a British oil corporation, and whatnot! Last season ended with a cliffhanger, when Tom Quinn’s girlfriend Ellie was trapped inside her home with a time bomb. Even though it turns out to be a dud, Ellie can no longer face the complications of her relationship with Tom. New faces appear, wonderful new characters. A new MI5 employee, Sam, seems to have a thing for Danny. Then there’s doctor Vickie, who flirts so hard with Tom, he decides to date her, but after a severe test at work he decide to break things off. At the office, there’s also Ruth Everglade, who’s replacing Tessa (who was fired because she was running phantom agents), but we eventually learn she is actually a mole reporting to Downing Street. Tom’s CIA liaison Christine Dale also has a crush on Tom, but he’s ordered not to fraternize with foreign liaisons. Some Italian banker Carlo has the hots for Zoe, but thinks she’s called Emma; at some point he was helpful enough to assist MI5 with a money laundering scheme; but Zoe has to break things off. On his part, Tom is slowly unraveling, sympathizing and identifying with those he comes into contact with during his field ops. At long last, he is set up, framed for assassinating the minister of defense, pushed into a corner, and shoots his boss Harry. There’s nothing left for him then to swim to his death...

Spooks - Series 1

For the past few weeks I’ve been catching episodes of this BBC spy series about MI5 agents, called “Spooks,” which premiered in the U.K. back in 2002. In the first season we’re treated with anti-abortion terrorism, race-hate violence, human trafficking, Kurdish activism, a heist at MI5’s private bank, anti-globalization riots, anarchist agitation, bickering with MI6, double dealings by double agents, illegal arms deals, an attempt to overthrow the government, pompous Christian evangelism, and an IRA bombing. What gives the show psychological depth are the characters who try hard to keep their private lives entirely separate from their work as spies, struggling to keep the lies apart that they tell their loved ones. The main character Tom Quinn, who in his private life goes by the name of Matthew, has fallen in love with Ellie. Naturally, when he finally has the guts to tell her he is a spy, her world falls apart and she has no idea if she can ever trust him again. I also enjoy how the plots delve deep inside modern society’s ills and the individual psyche’s of criminals and psychopaths from which the spooks are hoping to save society Then there’s the dry sense of humor: “You’re a little shyte, Derrick. Have I ever told you that?” this MI5 bossman asks a government suit. “You’ve implied enough times, Harry. Take a chill pill,” the suit replies – all with the most civilized stiff upper lip! Nice series, try finding it yourself and see if you like it too.