Come the morning and the headlights fade away

DoaMS Week Six: That ticklish throat

That suggests that, for what's probably the sixth or seventh time in my life, being in classes full of people from around the country and around the world pretty much guarantees that at least one person on campus has a cold, and, pretty soon, everyone else will.

But let's not talk about courses, or money, or problems, or the fact that I'm not really talking at all, being as I have what might be called a reader deficiency, and most likely will keep that until the faculty work out that I blog and it's not, well, always complementary about everything, ever, to do with studying.

No, let's talk about Spooks. (Or, if you're American, MI-5.)

Here's the thing. Ten seasons in, ten years on, and Spooks still carries with it the single fundamental message that's perhaps not what the creators intended. Ideally, it should be The good person is the one who will sacrifice everything for their country, but, in reality, the message that comes across is People are arseholes, and that's only worse if you're a spy.

Don't get me wrong, this world is not a wonderful candyland filled with sparkles, optimism, and nice people, but in the world of Spooks, by the time the job finishes with you, you're either (a) dead, (b) a traitor, or (c), an arsehole, and let's be fair now, you can pick a combination of all three options if you're so inclined. In a way, I worry for Peter Firth, who is probably already considering either a dignified retirement or a post-Harry Pearce career, but if I were to voice a concern it would be that Harry Pearce, as a character, occasionally confuses having A Dark And Secret Past with being completely inured to the deaths of every single person who comes into sustained or prolonged contact with him, occasionally at his hands.

I find Spooks frustrating now in ways I didn't back when it started because in every episode of season 9 and now in season 10 there are moments of brilliance - nice, character-based touches that stand out. But the show is a strange chimera of BBC-budget action movie, British drama and a deep, deep dark spy story, the last of which colours every episode without adding anything in particular to the plot, because, as mentioned above, everyone's a bastard.

I cannot confirm or deny if this is a strict interpretation of the reality of the world of espionage, although I suspect the day-to-day life of someone trained from the very beginning in the ancient martial art of Truss Tno Won is, basically, hell. But to begin with, Spooks always felt like a high-calibre recruiting video for the security services and a televisual panacea to trouble times, combining two simple tenets;

(I) Look at the spies doing their job with the latest technology and the highest grade of training, with quick, smart professionalism and ruthless cool; wouldn't you like that to be your career?

(II) If your answer to (I) is no, thank you, then look at the spies doing their job; they're protecting you, all the way up to laying their lives on the line for your security and peace of mind, even the poor lass who ended up deep-fat-fryed, prompting all those complaints back in the day.

But recently, the spies are no longer perfect, the lives are no longer perfect, and everyone seems to use iPhones, although the information security of Apple products is in no way endorsed by the British Government, obviously.

I have followed Spooks, series by series, for ten years, now.

I find the last sentence curiously difficult to assimilate into my worldview.

And maybe it's just that I'm a different viewer now to how I was when it started, but the character moments seem to matter that much more, somehow. In the last series, one of the best-played moments was the Home Secretary simply noting that Harry had not removed his gloves. In this week's episode, it all hinges around emptying a bottle of milk with quiet acceptance.

This is, I feel, a very British thing.

So is, of course, mixing action and drama with tragedy. Which is why so, so many characters in Spooks - functionally everyone except Harry and Ruth, who could form the centre of the most dysfunctional love around - are, well, dead, or gone.

Or an arsehole.

Look at it this way; in the world of this week's Spooks episode, a small part of the British secret service is able to comprehensively penetrate and control every security system in the American Embassy like it's, well, nothing. It's a world where Ruth, having just stolen an invaluable piece of equipment from said embassy, and having been a spy for a long time now, doesn't check the back seat of her car before getting in. A world where the CIA don't track (a) their directors movements, (b) have a dedicated car service which requires identification, or (c) their remaindered laptops). A world where a warehouse filled with sensitive material is guarded by two people who, when walking away, don't hear an incredibly loud door slamming behind them as someone goes in. A world where a van packed with explosives manages not to kill a man sat in a car around six feet away (although the car, being as it was for a cabinet member, was most likely armoured, so your mileage may vary). A world where a dedicated, decorated spy chief doesn't have his car checked for any kind of listening or tracking devices after meeting someone from an opposing security service (although the two were related, so, again, make of it what you will).

This is because, fact fans, how you tell the story is more important than the story itself.

*

Here's the funny thing. For all the changes, for everything that's altered over the decade the show's been running - sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse - I still want to see the finale, because finales always bring out the best in writers, directors and actors. It's the same principle as credits - whatever your film is, the first and last thing people see are the credits, so impress with them and you can get people on your side. But the finale of ten years of skullduggery, occasional explosions, and people sustaining both physical and psychological damage and getting back up and fighting until they can't anymore; well, that should be worth watching.