Israel. Palestine.
Spooks.
It’s a dramatic intifada waiting to happen…
In brief, MI5 are on hand to ensure the smooth running of secret Middle Eastern peace talks taking place in London. The US president’s chairing the action, there’s an assassin after his head and, to cap it all off, the Israeli father-daughter negotiation team are having family problems – what with her blaming him for 14 months she spent chained to a radiator in a terrorist’s basement and all.
With the world’s most contentious conflict under the gun this week you’d be forgiven for watching through your fingers, waiting for a wealth of geo-political howlers.
Fear not: the writers sidestepped cries of ‘Bias!’ neatly. Early on, the ever-excellent Home Secretary told Harry that he’d seen the damage the situation in the Middle East does to both sides during a ‘dalliance with long-haired do-gooding’ in the region – effectively ruling out political editorialising.
That was a huge relief: if you want a deep analysis of the situation in the Middle East, I’m pretty sure the Meg and Mog books would be a better starting point than Spooks.
With that out of the way, things could unravel into a glorious mess of silliness. The Queen signed the Official Secrets Act, a Lebanese terrorist sneaked through Britain’s porous borders to stop an attempt on the POTUS’ life and the senior Israeli negotiator threatened to set Mossad on every shady bastard in London if the would-be assassin wasn’t found in two hours. Worra deadline!
My favourite slice of foolishness came when Beth was abducted from outside the talks, right in front of the collected security forces of four countries. What followed next was pure, unadulterated Spooks.
Having taken her to a workshop under a railway line and tied her to a water pipe the bad man punched her in the stomach and told her she was only alive because she might be useful. After this bit of platonic slap and tickle, he immediately sliced his leg open and hobbled off to a nearby hospital to grab a stashed sniper rifle and take pot shots at dignitaries outside the talks until Lucas arrived to shoot him. All in two minutes of screen time – now that’s story telling.
Better still, it turned out the sniper had to shoot through a building, using prevailing winds and unicorn tears to hit his target – and he seemed to know it was a suicide mission, making his chat with Beth seem a little pointless.
Unless, that is, he thought Beth might be useful to advance the plot by escaping and dishing up a bit of exposition, in which case he was dead right…
But what was he distracting our chaps from? Well, the daughterly half of Israel’s delegate pairing was actually the assassin! She’d injected liquid explosives into herself and intended to detonate them using a wristwatch, taking out the Palestinian-sympathising President and sending a message to Israel’s enemies.
Why she needed a distraction at all was beyond me. Why didn’t she just go clicky-boom when she met the big guy in person rather than drawing attention to herself? Wouldn’t the explosives quickly be diluted in her blood stream? Would it work using the £10 Casio watch I’m wearing right now? Because that would rock.
These are the sorts of questions fans of Spooks must never ask. Why?
Shut up – that’s why.
Anyway, no one died so it all ended well – there was even a half-reconciliation between father and daughter. Blah blah…
What’s more exciting is that in our weekly ‘Look! North!’ section, the Dutch tramp had only gone and had a shave, bought a suit and shacked up with Dr Miss Lady. Lucas’ face was a picture when he found out – especially in the closing negative shot, where he looked like Derek Acorah.
Series nine is getting better as it reaches what can only be a monumentally preposterous climax. I’m more hooked than ever.
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