TV - Spooks: Season Three
Posted 12 October 04 by Scott AndrewsI’ll be reviewing each episode of Spooks season three on this page as the season progresses, and as I get around to it :-) Be warned, there are SPOILERS below!
Due to computer crashes and subsequent upgrades the reviews have lain fallow for a while, but fret not, new reviews coming soon, now my whizzbang super computer is working again :-)
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Episode 3.2
Best bad line of dialogue:
Zoe: I’ve seen this happen before, a field agent’s conscience just exploded.
Danny: What happened?
Zoe: Three agents died!
Am I the only one who had an image of a guy’s actual head exploding and killing three people with skull shrapnel?
The plot of this week’s ep revolves around the macguffin of Red Mercury, a supposedly mythical perfect trigger for an atomic bomb. Terrorists want to get their hands on some (why don’t they just crack open a thermometer, I’m forced to wonder?) and so the Spooks reactivate a sleeper – a Nobel prize winning chemist – as a flytrap to lure the bad guys into a trap. That the Scientist looks uncannily like Dr David Kelly, and is callously thrown to the winds by the Spooks with no regard for his family whatsoever is in no way meant to reflect upon the government’s handling of Kelly. Oh, hang on, of course it bloody is.
Bit inflammmatory of Auntie Beeb to allow a fictionalised allusion to their darkest day to go out in prime time, but if you’re going to taunt the government at least do it big.
Meanwhile Zoe pursues an affair with a photo journalist after the most stunningly cursory set up sequence. One scene, a bit of quiet vetting (no, they checked his background, they didn’t have her spayed) and it’s off with the clothes and on with the endless post-coital spy jokes. Presumably this is how they’re going to write her out of the show too, which implies that again, they’re going to let a character have a happy ending. (Gossip suggests that in the real world Keeley Hawes is preggers by Mathew MacFadyen, so her departure may be only temporary, until her bump goes down.)
Anyway, Tom gets to go doolally, which is played just right by the excellent MacFadyen, who’s going to be sorely missed. He’s like the English David Duchovny. At first you think he’s just wooden as a tree stump but then, as you get used to what he’s doing, you realise he’s actually brilliantly underplaying everything. I think he’s a great choice for Mr Darcy, far better than hapless old Martin wossname in Bride and Prejudice.
So farewell Tom Quinn. Hard to believe they didn’t bump him off, have him go out in a blaze of pyrotechnic glory. Letting him walk away from MI5 after his ‘conscience explodes’ was kind of anticlimactic and surprisingly generous towards the character. But rumours suggested Matthew MacFadyen had filmed four episodes for this season, so maybe he’s going to come back and get a big send off towards the end.
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Episode 3.1
Spooks is played completely straight. The cast manage to avoid, despite all the numerous temptations, sending the show up. So close to being Spoofs but not quite. And that’s why it’s so good.
The dialogue is risible – worst line of the ep went to Tom who had to say ‘It feels like it’s stopped raining in my head’ when he’s finally cleared – the plotting lame, the pacing ludicrous. It is, let’s face it, as daft as a brush.
Take the opening episode of Season Three which went out last night. Tom was last seen swimming out to sea after shooting his boss at point blank range with a shotgun. But before you can say ‘it’s Bugs with a budget!’ Tom has miraculously escaped – How? – and his boss is wandering around only hampered by a slinged arm. Riiiight.
Then last season’s plotline was wrapped up with effortless ease in one simple scene set in a church. AND they managed to find time for a subplot with a fantastically malevolent Tim McInerny trying to take over the secret service and slapping Tom’s wimpy girlfriend around a bit.
Ludicrous. But wonderful simply because tosh that has this much chutzpah and style, played with utter conviction, is always compulsively watchable – just look at 24 and Alias.
The new guy, Rupert Penry-Jones, who will be replacing Tom in three episodes time, was good but lacks Mathew MacFadyen’s stoney faced charisma, and with Keeley Hawes on the way out too, it looks like it’s going to be a season of chopping and changing.
But just as long as they don’t do any episodes as flat out awful as last season’s evil boy computer genius nonsense then we’ll be fine.
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