Spooks

One of the minor television channels in Israel started showing the British drama series Spooks from the beginning, and I was fortunate to see all the episodes screened, starting from the beginning (previously I had seen a few episodes from the seventh or eighth series and didn't really understand very much).

The first series started off promisingly by showing as much of top agent Tom's out of office life as it did his in office life. The second series was even better than the first and finished on a huge cliff-hanger. As episodes were being screened here on a nightly basis, I didn't have to wait long for the resolution. One thing became clear about this series: anybody could die (or at least, leave). This was signaled in only the second episode when one of the staff was killed, but the second episode of the third series had main character Tom being sacked after undergoing what amounted to a nervous breakdown.

His leaving was signaled in advance by the addition of a new character in the first episode of the third series; this signal was to be repeated twice more during the same series as two of the other mainstays (Zoe and Danny) also left the series. Might the fact that the actress playing the part of Zoe left her husband in order to live with the actor playing the part of Tom have anything to do with this?

The fourth series opened with 50% of the original cast/staff having been replaced and an emphasis on more action orientated stories. I have to admit that I prefer the more cerebral stuff. I don't think that a gun was shown at all during the first series, whereas the series 3 closer and the series 4 opener had guns alore - which were used. The body count in one episode was higher than the entire first series (and possibly the first two series). 

As I've only seen the first two episodes of the fourth series, I will refrain from making more comments, save to say that these episodes brought a change of style which I didn't care for. Although I had recorded all the episodes (for the show is shown late at night), to my chagrin I had deleted almost all of them, and only the last few episodes have found their way to permanent storage. I'm going to retain all the episodes from now on, and recover the missing episodes from the Internet.