After last week’s light-hearted romp through cold-blooded killings, the real politik necessity of mutually assured destruction and a wealth of double-crossings, things in Spooks just took a turn for the worse.
The super spies are drawn into a plot involving a super-important Chinese scientist working on water purification technology for the CIA, being sheltered by the UK and being hunted by her country’s security service.
It’s clearly a bad time to be a boffin. If you’re not getting your head kicked in by Azakhstani dissidents, chances are someone wants to steal your work, blow up your office and shoot you in the face.
The arrival of the Chinese operatives in the UK was top class. Three of them pitched up on a train, a plane and an automobile respectively (the chap in the car faked a Calais booze cruise as cover – his sorry-looking haul of 12 Corona and a pack of unfiltered Gauloises should’ve rung a few bells at Dover in these straightened economic times).
Reconvening in a safe house, they whipped out a comedic range of hand-cannons and Uzis, japing about and laughingly proclaiming ‘It’s a good job
I’m not a terrorist!’ The office parties at Beijing’s Spook Central must knock the Thames House Christmas bash into a cocked hat.
With their arrival in the UK precipitating panic round MI5’s briefing table, Beth was pushed to recruit a Chinese diplomat called Kai before she was ready. Predictably, she made a massive balls of it, putting her asset right off the whole business. I like cuddly ex-paramilitary security contracter Beth, and I hope this minor gaffe won’t be held against her when HR have to decide if she’s passed her three-month probation period.
Don’t worry though, Kai got back onside to help our plucky chaps out, assisting Lucas and Dimitri as they escaped from the Chinese embassy after botching a break-in and then alerting the team to an explosive threat at the scientist’s lab.
From there, it was business as usual: tortuous double-crosses, the CIA being high-handed dickheads and lots of running around the streets of London.
Things culminated in a tense standoff between the goodies and the baddies as politicians once again chucked morality in the bin and set fire to it. Unusually, things worked out for the best and no one died – which surely makes it a great day at the office for the Spooks. With the scientist secured and Kai rescued, it was trebles all round!
As ever, the best bits of the episode were the details. I particularly liked the Home Secretary’s ‘epic hangover’ and hangdog carping about Starbucks leaving the hazelnut syrup out of his bucket-sized restorative coffee. He’s rapidly becoming one of my favourite characters thanks to the excellent acting of Simon Russell Beale, who coincidentally played haunted spymaster George Smiley in Radio 4’s recent adaptations of John le Carré’s Cold War classics. His snarking at Harry is a real joy to watch.
Chinese traitor Kai also benefited from some excellent writing and acting. His anger at his country and at himself for the death of his dissident brother after Tiananmen Square was genuinely affecting, and his final actions in the episode ended the story on a bleakly moving note.
He was certainly more rounded than Tariq, who’s still reduced to talking techy bollocks and, at one point, giving Kai a lie detector test like the backstage
scrotes from the nation’s festival of infidelity and idiot misery, The Jeremy Kyle Show. ‘He’s on the level… flying colours’ Tariq said, confirming to the team that Kai dint knock up Shaz and that innit.
Elsewhere, the action had a bit of a New Wave revival feel to it, with the Chinese security services being referred to as ‘CSS’ so much I expected a showdown with their London head to consist of the Brazilian band’s frontwoman Lovefoxxx prancing along the banks of the Thames shouting ‘Desalination technology is my bitch house’. With Harry also threatening to provide Ruth with a cowbell at one point, I half expected an impromptu rendition of ‘Thames House of Jealous Lovers’ to break out. Funky!
Lucas’ sub-plot also continues apace. After knocking boots with Miss Lady Doctor, he found a photo of them snogging resting on his kitchen work surface – a present from London’s most nimble, limping, house-breaking Dutch tramp. Under the cosh of the Big Issue seller-turned-blackmailer (who now weirdly sounds like John Humphreys), Lucas used a junior member of MI5’s log-in details to steal a picture of a painting of a boat from the archives.
He also set the poor schlub up to cover his tracks, diverting a wodge of slush- fund cash to the poor sod’s bank account, getting him pinched by the rozzers for theft and leaving his homeless tormentor to jeer “Whose life did you wreck this time?”
It’s only going to get more juicy next time out: Ruth’s getting suspicious and, even better, the episode ended with the CSS officers we thought had left looking at a dossier on naughty Mr North, grinningly screwing a silencer onto a gun and saying nabbing the scientist wasn’t the reason they were in London in the first place.
I actually clapped my hands with glee at that final shot. The game’s most definitely afoot.
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