TV: The Sleeper (Spooks episode 3.2)
I wasn’t supposed to like Spooks. I was told as much, by J, as he tore season one & two from their jiffy bags. “You wont enjoy this, because you love 24 and you hate that bloke from the Pride & Prejudice film. Oh, and season three is being shipped next week.”
This ‘English 24’ smacked of everything that is wrong with our country’s tv. Another embarrassing attempt by the Brits to emulate a gritty subject already conquered by the big brash Yanks. This catch-all extends to Casualty which, yes I know, started some eight years before ER. But let’s face it, while recent trips to County have been painful, there’s bad tv and then there’s Holby.
It wasn’t until later, after I was hooked, that I was reminded of the sick making tagline “MI5 not 9 to 5” from the BBC trailers. If I’d have known that at the time, I’d probably have refused the first episode. Which would have been cynical to say the least. But with only approximately 300 tv watching minutes in a day, I need a system to eradicate the periphery.
Episode 1 Thou Shalt Not Kill centred on Mary Kane, a ‘pro life extremist’ sporting a pitiful imitation of an American accent and a grudge against abortion doctors. “Hardly something Jack Bauer would lose sleep over”, I muttered. But then cars started exploding, innocent kids expired and it all got pretty exciting. Plus the spy stuff was cool, and intriguing on a new level because it was happening on the streets of London town. A feature which would prompt me to ask J (perhaps now wishing he’d pushed harder down the “second rate Colin Firth” route) “does that really happen in the UK?” at least twice every episode.
Three weeks on, in a true epitome of the digital instant gratification culture we’ve devoured 2 seasons. We’re left with the cliff-hanging finale of Tom shooting Harry and wandering off into the sea. Except we already know that neither of them die, thanks to reruns on Hallmark and an unfortunate slip of the info button. Nevertheless, we manage to hold out little over 48 hours before jumping onto season three to watch our protagonist clear his name in a series of killings, car tricks and the obligatory metamorphosis into a bum. As expected, by the end of the episode everything is hunky-dory and the team live to drink another bottle of wine.
Season three episode two of opens, for us, on a blurry Sunday morning as a reward for meeting a harsh deadline some 5 hours previous. In our slumber filled haze we conclude that new guy Adam is here to stay (a long and arduous process, aided significantly by the fact that his photo is on the dvd cover) and predict obvious tension with Tom because they are too similar. We also briefly consider the possibility that this might be Tom’s last season, in a whimsical “living happily ever after with Ellie” kind of way. As the episode progresses, however, Tom swings dangerously from immoral firebrand to honourable rebel, and we begin to realise that this is it. Sleep deprivation kicks in, and I’m soon wailing “don’t leave Tom, you’re my hero!” at the tv.
Despite my protestations, our star experiences a ‘conscience explosion’ and tries to sabotage the operation, dragging along the sleeper agent Professor who, by this point is really rather enjoying all this spy shit and doesn’t particularly want to be saved. So they stop Tom by landing a chopper on the road in front of his speeding car. Which is probably the coolest thing I’ve seen on tv this year, and certainly the best use of a helicopter since the opening titles of Baywatch. And then Harry decommissions him. And I sob. In 21 days this bloke has gone from a barely noticeable minor irritant in a movie remake, to one of my favourite tv characters of all time. Because I really am that fickle. And this programme really is that bloody good. It’s left to Harry to deliver the immortal line “And of course you realise we’ll never meet again”. And then Tom Quinn is gone.
Spooks continues, and we decide to stick with it. Not least thanks to the promise of “another shocking and very sad death” in season four. My one ongoing niggle, apart from the obvious loss of Tom who I think I am actually in love with, is the time frame. Each operation takes a minimum of four day to come to fruition. One cant help but point out that Jack could have juggled all that in less than 24 hours, while ‘dark’, saving his less than useless family members from kidnap and systematically torturing his way through a hefty pile of bad guys.
This ‘English 24’ smacked of everything that is wrong with our country’s tv. Another embarrassing attempt by the Brits to emulate a gritty subject already conquered by the big brash Yanks. This catch-all extends to Casualty which, yes I know, started some eight years before ER. But let’s face it, while recent trips to County have been painful, there’s bad tv and then there’s Holby.
It wasn’t until later, after I was hooked, that I was reminded of the sick making tagline “MI5 not 9 to 5” from the BBC trailers. If I’d have known that at the time, I’d probably have refused the first episode. Which would have been cynical to say the least. But with only approximately 300 tv watching minutes in a day, I need a system to eradicate the periphery.
Episode 1 Thou Shalt Not Kill centred on Mary Kane, a ‘pro life extremist’ sporting a pitiful imitation of an American accent and a grudge against abortion doctors. “Hardly something Jack Bauer would lose sleep over”, I muttered. But then cars started exploding, innocent kids expired and it all got pretty exciting. Plus the spy stuff was cool, and intriguing on a new level because it was happening on the streets of London town. A feature which would prompt me to ask J (perhaps now wishing he’d pushed harder down the “second rate Colin Firth” route) “does that really happen in the UK?” at least twice every episode.
Three weeks on, in a true epitome of the digital instant gratification culture we’ve devoured 2 seasons. We’re left with the cliff-hanging finale of Tom shooting Harry and wandering off into the sea. Except we already know that neither of them die, thanks to reruns on Hallmark and an unfortunate slip of the info button. Nevertheless, we manage to hold out little over 48 hours before jumping onto season three to watch our protagonist clear his name in a series of killings, car tricks and the obligatory metamorphosis into a bum. As expected, by the end of the episode everything is hunky-dory and the team live to drink another bottle of wine.
Season three episode two of opens, for us, on a blurry Sunday morning as a reward for meeting a harsh deadline some 5 hours previous. In our slumber filled haze we conclude that new guy Adam is here to stay (a long and arduous process, aided significantly by the fact that his photo is on the dvd cover) and predict obvious tension with Tom because they are too similar. We also briefly consider the possibility that this might be Tom’s last season, in a whimsical “living happily ever after with Ellie” kind of way. As the episode progresses, however, Tom swings dangerously from immoral firebrand to honourable rebel, and we begin to realise that this is it. Sleep deprivation kicks in, and I’m soon wailing “don’t leave Tom, you’re my hero!” at the tv.
Despite my protestations, our star experiences a ‘conscience explosion’ and tries to sabotage the operation, dragging along the sleeper agent Professor who, by this point is really rather enjoying all this spy shit and doesn’t particularly want to be saved. So they stop Tom by landing a chopper on the road in front of his speeding car. Which is probably the coolest thing I’ve seen on tv this year, and certainly the best use of a helicopter since the opening titles of Baywatch. And then Harry decommissions him. And I sob. In 21 days this bloke has gone from a barely noticeable minor irritant in a movie remake, to one of my favourite tv characters of all time. Because I really am that fickle. And this programme really is that bloody good. It’s left to Harry to deliver the immortal line “And of course you realise we’ll never meet again”. And then Tom Quinn is gone.
Spooks continues, and we decide to stick with it. Not least thanks to the promise of “another shocking and very sad death” in season four. My one ongoing niggle, apart from the obvious loss of Tom who I think I am actually in love with, is the time frame. Each operation takes a minimum of four day to come to fruition. One cant help but point out that Jack could have juggled all that in less than 24 hours, while ‘dark’, saving his less than useless family members from kidnap and systematically torturing his way through a hefty pile of bad guys.
posted by Shhh at 11:36 AM
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