Last night saw the finale of the ever-fantastical BBC spy series, Spooks. If you’ve never seen it before, it is about a group of egotistical clerical officers who take themselves far too seriously, and snoop on baddies from largely non-Christian countries.
In this week’s episode the Israelis airstrike a school located on the Gaza Strip, and while it isn’t really clear why that happened or why it involves the British, it just does. Events do seem to be created on the hoof in this episodic window on the fictional offices of MI5. For instance, the Venezuelans of all people randomly sent a coded message to our boys via the medium of Beethoven’s 7th. This Mighty Boosh-inspired idea was promptly resolved by Adam Carter (Rupert Penry-Jones) and team by replying with Pomp and Circumstance. Perhaps everyone will start sending messages using the songs of Steps instead of texting in future.
Regular viewers may have noticed the absence of Zaf (Raza Jaffrey) throughout the latter part of this series. Any speculation as to his health was finally laid to rest tonight when in quite a blasé fashion he was declared definitely probably dead.
Our favourite character, Connie James (Gemma Jones) soon cheered us up with that vacant look on her face of someone trying to remember if they left the gas on. It was also nice to see some use being made of recent addition Jo (Miranda Raison). Previously a filler character, she finally got her BAFTA moment in tonight’s cliff-hanger when the ‘Redbacks’ mercenary group, who seem to have an uncanny likeness to the creators of Google, kidnapped both her and Adam.
This left Jo begging Adam to kill her, using the analogy of humanely killing an injured bird. The fact that she was neither a bird nor injured didn’t seem to come up.
In the meantime, poor Harry (Peter Firth) was left to single-handedly deal with a school attack, the assassination of the Venezuelan president, and the kidnapping of two of his most photogenic agents.
Last night's Spooks neatly wrapped up the series plotlines, albeit briskly, including that of the double-crossing American agent; we didn’t see that coming… never.To find out if Adam killed Jo before the big rescue, or if Connie left the gas on, you’ll have to wait till next year.
[story by Keith Emmerson]