Spooks / MI5

Odd that a thread for this hasn't been created yet.

I think they've taken the wise decision to stop it before it gets too preposterous. The most recent season was an improvement on the previous couple (although never really found Lucas that engaging a character on the whole). Has had some real high points over the years and (as it's claimed) focussing on Harry for the last run could be a classic way to go out. I fully expect them to leave it on a cliffhanger.

Anyone else looking forward?

Yes, very much so ... really enjoy this show. It's being played up as a 'big clash' that it's been scheduled against Downton Abbey, but I don't really see it myself ... not sure that there are that many people who would want to see both a tense spy drama like Spooks and a 'Mum programme' like Downton.

I've followed the 3 first series, but I have to say my interest got downhill after Tom left the service. Then Zoe took the boot and my interest ended up on the basement where it still lies.

I couldn't get into it, even though I tried. If only for Richard Armitage. But there were just too many characters, most of whom I knew nothing about and didn't care about, so I hadn't a clue what was going on.

Although I keep saying I need to get series 7 - 9. I don't want any of the others. If I can get them cheap enough, then I can justify the shallow desire to fast-forward through and just watch Richard Armitage. Well, that's how I watched all three series of Robin Hood, let's face it.

I loved the Tom years (the ones I own), then saw a short bit of a dip, but then the show just got electrifying as it got more political paranoia-focused (esp when the one team member gets lynched in a forest.) I think the only year that really tanked was 8 or 9, the next-to-last year with the Lucas character.

I don't know why these people weren't picked to write this decade's Bond films. They can deliver spy-vs-spy stuff and can do character as well. I still kind of think of Adam Carter as Bruce Boxleitner BABYLON 5 - kind of generic leader guy, not compelling -- but the writing and everything else still made the series something special during almost all of that era.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

not sure that there are that many people who would want to see both a tense spy drama like Spooks and a 'Mum programme' like Downton.

Well, my mum for one.

I'll watch it as I did the last series for Harry Pearce. I remember seeing some of it be filmed down by Tate Modern, ended up following Firth across Millennium Bridge without realising until he turned round at Tate.

I'd settle for the last episode having Pearce destroy MI5 by some red-button self-destruct before walking off with Ruth. Won't happen but not as preposterous as some of Spooks.

I'd settle for Jenny Agutter resurfacing so she and Harry can have a Holmes/Moriarty finish falling into the Thames, their teeth in the other's throat.

An excellent start for this last season.

^ Indeed it was.

I'd love Harry and Ruth to walk off 'into the sunset' together at the end of the last episode, but then again this IS Spooks, so ...

It was great but I don't get that even on the BBC they're commenting more about Downton Abbey being back than this - shame that Spooks may get clobbered in the ratings.

Watched episode 2 tonight and well, it's moving along as only Spooks can. I swear there's more slow motion stuff than before. Like some Wes Anderson movie. Maybe like Baywatch they have to flesh it out with slow-mo to fill time. Developments are...there. Good to see Jonathan Hyde even if his Russian accent sounds funny. Alice Krige is a shade above her Borg Queen persona and then there's Lara Pulver, lumme. Ding dong and the rest.

Sorry for reviving an old thread but, I'm a big fan of Spooks. Love the series and have all Ten on DVD. Although they're all now on Britbox (uk)  So many great stories, and they weren't afraid to kill off their
leading stars, plenty of shocking moments too.

The 'death by being shoved headfirst into deep-fat fryer' that befell Lisa Faulkner's character was one of the UK's most complained-about TV moments ever.

Given that she's now best known as a chef, I think it was a weird sort of premonition .

Yes, I still remember that scene horrific.

I've actually got the whole run on DVD, though I've only done the first 3 season about five times through, the rest only twice. I think it recovers a bit in s5 when they have a short arc that is kind of 7 DAYS IN MAY-like, but I think the guy playing Adam in the middle seasons is awfully bland (and he is apparently in a ton of other series, going by recent perusals.)

Really think they missed the boat with the movie; that should have reflected the surprise reappearance of somebody in the last shot of the last episode and built on it instead of hoping GoT fever would make people rush to see this Kit Harrington guy, who I find pretty lamentable in everything I've seen him in.

Am still convinced that if they had hired the SPOOKS writers to do this century's run of Bonds (and then not turned around and rewritten them to death, which seems the way at Eon) that there'd have been much more consistent and compelling product emerging.

I got turned onto this show by a total fluke. In the early 2000s, I was home just after 4pm one day and flipping channels, pausing on A&E because I liked the blonde there. It was a terrorist takeover show with Zoe getting to do her "I'm soandso soandso of her majesty's secret service,' line, and hearing that, I was HOOKED. Wound up driving about 40 minutes to find a store that rented the episodes and got caught up in no time at all.

And yeah, the fryer thing is amazing, terribly amazing. And doing it so early on was terrific, because it put you so off balance going forward. Had no idea she became known for kitchen work.

I remember starting on this with the the episode that starts with the face in deep fryer. The early couple of series were the best personally. Later series I gave up on.

Personally, it wasn't helped by the Beeb doing the publicity by ending with "MI5 not 9 to 5" which seemed cheesy.

Trivially, Peter Firth used to shop in the store I worked in. Once, I was walking out back and as always, for whatever reason, I glanced down aisles and this bearded face looked at me and my mind went "isn't that Peter Firth?" but I kept on. Unlike one manager, I didn't hold up the whole shop to get an autograph!