With the casting announcements for the upcoming movie adaptation of The Hobbit floating across the media lately, you may have noticed the role of Thorin Oakenshield has been taken by previous Man Candy subject, Richard Armitage. Somewhat neatly this grants me an opportunity to talk about one of the programs I’ve been making a point of watching lately, and that’s long-running spy drama Spooks.
Spooks often airs outside of the UK under the altered title of MI-5. It is at present reaching the conclusion of its 9th series and currently stars Richard Armitage as Lucas North.
I say ‘currently stars’ of course, he’s been in the role since series 7, but if there’s one thing that separates Spooks from other spy dramas it’s the way it is so incredibly unsentimental about its characters. The first series notoriously killed off one of its leads by plunging her head into a deep-fat-fryer, and it’s a theme that has clung ever since. No character is ever safe and the secrecy surrounding filming usually ensures that the way people are written out is almost always swift and unexpected. Only one character has remained unchanged since the program’s inception in 2002 and that is Counter-Terrorism chief Harry Pierce, played by Peter Firth.
The format of Spooks is fairly standard. Eight, hour-long episodes centre around the operatives in ‘Section D’, an elite unit dedicated to protecting national security. Each episode features a threat-of-the-week and the series is connected together by an underlying plot thread that almost always concludes on some sort of cliff-hanger or disaster. On the most part it’s enjoyable, paranoid hokum, with the usual quota of impossible technology and unlikely terror suspects, but it does occasionally succeed in being a little cleverer than it likes to appear on the surface.
As well as being unafraid to write out popular characters with absolutely no warning, the series is also equally willing to let Section D occasionally fail. As in real life, a positive outcome is never entirely guaranteed, political agendas interfere over moral choices, the characters are frequently fallible and even the things you’re certain about can be turned on their head in the blink of an eye. The scripts are often inspired by, and updated to reflect, current political situations. The governmental characters change in response to real-life election results or alterations in the ruling parties, and the source of the threats faced by Section D is heavily influenced by existing international tensions. It succeeds in staying current not just by reacting to recent events but also by attempting to predict what will be happening in the months after shooting, when the series actually airs.
I will admit, I am a bit of a latecomer to Spooks. Somewhat like Richard Armitage’s character Lucas, I only joined at the beginning of series 7 myself. However, despite the fact that it’s a show with a lot of history, the continual cast changes mean it’s actually pretty easy to leap into it from almost any point you happen to catch. I will say however that I enjoyed series 7 and 8 more than I’ve enjoyed the 9th. They had a slightly more consistent pace to them. The week-by-week plots this year have been a little disappointing and the early part of the series was unusually slow at times. Yet I find myself utterly unable to quit because the overriding plot arc is currently busy undermining absolutely everything I thought I knew. I now find myself in the position where I really can’t stop watching because I genuinely have to know what the hell is going on.
For the new viewer, Spooks is a pretty entertaining hour of spy action. There’s normally plenty of guns, the standard race against time, and sometimes things explode. When it’s good, it’s very, very good. When it’s vicious, it can be outright brutal. On the whole it’s engaging, escapist drama.
For regular viewers, I’m going to say series 9 has been a bit of an odd one. It introduced a number of new characters this year, and some of them work better than others. The new Home Secretary is interestingly blunt, and I’ve grown to rather like Beth, however Dimitri has all the charisma of the Section D office chairs. As I said though, the series-long arc makes up for some of the slower episodes and Lucas gets to spend an awful lot of time practicing the tortured, brooding look he got so good at in series 8.
Season 10 is currently set to begin filming in 2011 and all previous series are available on DVD in both R1 and R2 format.
Lady T
Lady T is a great lover of British TV, which is helpful as that's mostly what she gets to watch. She strongly believes that tea can't be made using a microwave, that children's programming really was better when she was a kid, and that there's nothing in the world that can't be solved with a liberal application of common sense. She very much enjoys reading but like most of the rest of the world would some day like to write a book herself. If she ever succeeds in doing so there's a pretty good chance she'll never shut up about it. She can be contacted at lady_t_220 @ yahoo.co.uk.
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