Spooks

Like Jonathan Creek, this is a BBC show that thinks itself complex and quality writing – with which I vehemently disagree. But also like Creek, it’s something I find myself all too happy to watch.

I criticised Creek for having nothing to say and poor character development. This is not true of Spooks, with its irritating lower case and square bracket embedded title, which I will not be adopting here. But Spooks fancies itself a higher contender on the issues front than it really is.  And unlike Ashes to Ashes, also by Kudos production company, Spooks does not have the spiritual and inspiring aspect; and nor is it funny (though it attempts to be).

Spooks repeatedly says of itself (in interviews and companion volumes) that this is the non glamorous view of spies. It even makes a derogatory reference to other spy stories in Ep 1 Series 2, where a villain refuses a conventional spy film at the video store. But Spooks is pleased to quote itself being called ‘glossy’ in its companion books  and the cast openly admit to their designer clothing. In Series 2, the wages of a medium level employee is revealed – £32k; not really enough for the cost of the clothes regularly worn in the show. And the slowed down hairdryer in the wind shots of them in their Nicole Farhi long coats are only  there to look cool.

There are countless scenes of violence clearly choreographed to excite. I read a very irritating article in Sight and Sound on the very powerful Agora – a recent Spanish film on the 4th C female philosopher, Hypatia, played by Rachel Weiz. The reviewer said that Alejandro Amanabar – director of Agora – did not have the action scene finesse of Ridley Scott (whose 2000 film was also set in the Roman empire). But the reviewer contradicts herself and misses her own point. Whereas Gladiator seemed to be just about entertainment, Agora is not about violence being stylishly orchestrated or appealing. It is meant to be horrific – and even at a 12 cert – it regularly is. Often the point is made that what is disturbing about violence in the entertainment media is when it is no longer shocking. Agora brings the messiness and disturbance that being in such an environment would and should cause. Spooks happily does not dwell on scenes that it might – such as not showing all that happened when MI5 officer Helen is tortured by chip fat – but it does make spying appear cool and the violence is part of the thrill of viewing. I read that the MI5 got many new applications from those inspired by watching Spooks; when everything I saw gave me the opposite reaction.

I want to pause before commenting on the portrayal of the secret intelligent services to lampoon the so called high quality of the writing. I will make my point on television writing teams until it changes – that teams of writers make a mixed bag of inconsistent and frustrating and therefore poor television. The worst line and let down I can think of in any television comes in Spooks ep 1, series 2. The shoddily produced first official book, Spooks Confidential, was boasting of this superlative cliffhanger from the first series where senior officer Tom is left to watch through the window as his girlfriend and child are about to explode with a bomb. I pause again to attack the set up. We hadn’t heard enough about Ellie’s fears of safety to warrant the need to make a bomb blast proof door and window locking system with a swipe card for their home. How this wouldn’t have alerted the rest of Tom’s street to his being something unusual, I really question. And why can this money be found for him especially? Money found for spooking is another point I shall return to.

If the door is bomb blast proof then surely the threat to Ellie and daughter Maisie inside such a home is somewhat lessened? And fears that Tom might die should be allayed as he is the other side of that equipment from the bomb. The notion of the little girl getting cake mixture on the swipe card to make it jam just wasn’t believable and I was irritated by that whole scene, which we are made to rewatch at the start of series 2. We see a blast but learn that the fatal explosion caught a political target, and that this bomb – destined for MI5’s offices – was a decoy for IRA action. Whether the bomb in Tom’s lap exploded is immaterial – the diversion from their real target is what is important for the Irish independence fighters. The bomb could have been designed to count down and do nothing.

But as Tom clasped his emotionally frazzled family (a strange term considering Ellie is a pretty new girlfriend and Maisie is not his own daughter) in the ambulance, he explains the rather confusing let down with the crappest piece of dialogue: “36% of improvised bombs do not detonate” !! Why not just say that the bomb failed and it isn’t that unusual … why would you come up with stats at a time when you and our loved ones faced death only a short time ago?! You could call it character, but I consider it poor writing.

It’s an example of those who write about a world they do not have expertise in try too hard to make everything sound factual and knowledgeable. The actors often try too hard as well,  to sound confident and that jargon comes to them naturally. I sense that alot in Spooks.

I was rightly wooed to Spooks because I was told it was a people drama. I found the action plots of little interest, especially as most are wound up in under an hour. I think the returning series (of which Spooks is an example) is a poor model for television. I like dramas that continue each week with characters we care about and plots that unfold over time. I found myself skimming through this week’s terrorism to see what the story is really about, and found Tom and Ellie’s story was my only hook for series 1. It is moments like Zoe being unable to speak to an old school friend, or the feelings about being asked to carry out your first assassination, which made the story interesting. I had begun to watch because of Keeley Hawes’ involvement, but when she and her real life husband Matthew (Tom) left in series 3, I stopped watching the irritating and self important show and have had no further interest since 2004 until now. Like ITV’s prison drama Bad Girls, I felt that three series was enough and that when my favourite characters (in this case Nikki and Helen) left and their stories resolved, that I had no further need or desire to continue.

This next part is controversial. It makes me a little fearful. And I feel that I shouldn’t be. Britain is a free country, with freedom of speech. I am shocked by what has been written about the Queen, who has endured at least 2 dramas about her life in recent years and is readily taken off by comedians. I recall a very libel baiting channel 4 drama involving Margaret Thatcher,  whose many caricatures include the most famous Spitting Image puppet, when she was still Prime Minister. And offence to God and faith isn’t censored. Yet the Secret Services seem that shadowy body that is an unseen, unassailable and uncritiquable presence. They are right – along with the Free Masons whose hall the show borrows as MI5’s offices – to make their work better known and to be publicly accountable.

If Spooks is anything like right, then the intelligence service has huge amounts of money at the ready to open up shops, pay off informers and make gadgets at will if deemed necessary to snare threats. Meanwhile other government funding struggles.

 A big part of our democracy is from our free presses, but in the story, the press are often hushed and told to print something other than the truth. Spies rely on deceit, blackmail and false befriending, at the expense of being able to make real relationships. I saw a newspaper an advert to work for admin in MI5; and to even consider it (which I didn’t) the applicant was bound to secrecy. From even asking for the form, a blind comes down between the officers and their loved ones. We hear little of Spooks characters families and outside friends, and I think it would have been more interesting to see them recruited and lose touch with their loved ones.

The series shows people who challenge or ask the wrong question being bullied; and who break laws,  and who have blood matches on a database to any target they wish to follow.

And to these people, we give the safety of our nation.

I can only hope that the fictional portrayals are wrong, as an official MI5 comment suggests.

In the last episode I could bear to watch, a 2 day exercise taking the team way from their real duties faked the death of the Royal family and parliamentary leaders (isn’t that a kind of treason?!) and that MI5 (and not even the director or his deputy) assumed (note double meaning) control of the nation.

This defaults to a military unelected leadership. We were angry at how Gordon Brown got in as PM without election and the US was outraged about George Bush. So how would it feel to have this shadowy team (yes there’s that word again) who we’ve not even seen take over? Their skills and  training would be totally wrong for the running of a country. When many are pressing for greater accountability, honesty, and liberty – and a country based on better values than our current tired system of politics – the last thing we want is for a totalitarian dictatorship by spy leaders. Tom is commended for his leadership of that operation (which appears real) but I abhorred it. He takes guns to those that disobey, taking utilitarianism to its darkest extreme – that in the interest of wider good (as he sees it) he will kill a few to save a few more. When would MI5 let go of governing? Would they give the country a truly free choice of electing its new leaders? Is this better than the anarchy they so feared – or aren’t there better choices of temporary leader?

…Leaders to whom personal feelings are a weakness but their sense of morality is such that to kidnap and terrorise someone who’s tried to trace an officers’ car (not realising who they are), who can agree to ignore criminal activity to avoid a supposed greater calamity – are these the people we trust with our lives? Or those who send criminals on false passports to countries that they have no connection on false charges to kill them – defecting the death penalty we cannot give to another nation? (This scenario happened twice in 10 episodes).

The boasted of topical issues do try to show a little of the week’s targets’ views and that they are not wholly wrong. Yet the portrayal still shows little mercy or patience with them. I am totally against all forms of violence and do not support terrorism as a way of making a point at all, but the portrayal  we receive of groups like IRA and a few decades back, Russia, is very much Dangerous Enemy – must destroy. We are told that any such destruction is necessary and how much worse things they would do. It is implied that good fair Britain doesn’t torture or execute. I would like to think that is true, but Spooks here are shown as interrogating and ‘disincentivising’ targets – and in later series, they do torture. Do the writers ever wish us to question the rightness of this? I had assumed we were to see the Spooks team as always right, unless it’s Tessa embezzling money for paying imaginary agents (six of whom come to £150,000, I hope they paid their taxes). I would like the series better if it were clear that the team’s behaviour is not always right – if Tom hadn’t been commended for his leadership after that stupid exercise and we weren’t mean to agree with him for dumping his next girlfriend who had been kept waiting over a day for a call about her future. Tom needed to have explained he had a huge crisis on and not speak to loved ones like patronised minions.

It would have been better to have offered a subtle critique of MI5 and/or to have helped with its public image (or is that the unsuccessful plan?) and to have scrubbed the smart clothes and the split screens which offer nothing.  Perhaps such dramas are damaging to the work of MI5, making the public imagine we are being tracked by unscrupulous workforce whose remit is now worryingly broad, and that could be used to harass and silence non threatening dissenters rather than prevent real harm.

I like to be challenged but also inspired, and there’s sound advice from the apostle Paul and the new spirituality who both say: think on good things, especially your last thoughts at night. Creator of Spooks David Woolstencroft says he began to feel paranoid after writing the series. That does catch on, and a fear of modern day Francis Walsinghams following you seeps in. But to quote the Good Book again, we have not been given a spirit of fear, nor are fellow flesh and blood and their gadgets the ultimate. And neither is this unevenly and often unconvincingly written drama with crass jokes about the DG’s prostrate, inaccuracies such as canals in East Anglia the bees’ knees of television. But I’ll still keep hunting for Spooks material at the library – though of course, I shan’t borrow it with my card – I don’t want to arouse suspicion, just in case They are watching.