As the 'Spooks' movie arrives, a look back at the series
by Brittany Frederick, Community Contributor @tvbrittanyf
May 4, 2015 | 11:00AM
There’s a movie I’m excited about this weekend, and it’s not Avengers: Age of Ultron. May 8 is the release date for Spooks: The Greater Good, the feature-film continuation of the BBC One spy thriller (known as MI-5 during its broadcast in the United States). I’m thrilled to see the return of Peter Firth as tireless spy boss Harry Pearce, Game of Thrones‘ Kit Harington as his latest expert operative, and Scorpion star Elyes Gabel playing a terrorist instead of a super-genius.
If that paragraph made no sense to you, let me educate you on why you, too, should be a Spooks fan.
Spooks ran on BBC One—and erratically on A&E, PBS, and BBC America—from 2002 to 2011, during which time it was the British answer to 24 in the sense that its bad-guy-hunting exploits were equally likely to scare the hell out of you. Just as in CTU, the agents of MI-5 were all at risk, and they became increasingly expendable as the show went on. Every season, at least one person died—and there were countless close calls, betrayals, and reveals that routinely stung the audience. This was espionage in the trenches, although the beautiful locations of the UK and the talented directors made even the toughest scenes look like works of art.
At the same time, the show always served as a home to some of Britain’s best acting talent and a few future stars. The original main cast included veterans Firth and Jenny Agutter, who oversaw a trio of names yet to become big: Matthew Macfadyen (Ripper Street, Pride & Prejudice) as top operative Tom Quinn, with Keeley Hawes (Ashes to Ashes, Doctor Who) as Zoe Reynolds, and Golden Globe nominee David Oyelowo (Selma) portraying Danny Hunter. This initial group was as good as you could ask for to begin a series, and really helped ground Spooks‘ challenging exploits, giving the show a heart that made the series worth watching for more than its whiz-bang spycraft. Audiences were as invested in Tom, Zoe, and Danny as we were in whether or not they’d catch the terrorist of the week.
In the second series, audiences met Nicola Walker (Touching Evil) as Ruth Evershed, followed by series three bringing us Rupert Penry-Jones (Black Sails) as Tom’s replacement, Adam Carter, and Olga Sosnovska (All My Children) playing Adam’s wife and colleague, Fiona Carter. Adam and Fiona couldn’t have been more different from Tom and Zoe, but they shared the most important quality—that the audience was able to fall in love with them. Other shows have died when leads have been replaced, but Spooks stayed on top when its main characters rotated out—and that was just the beginning.
Other folks who were series regulars? Raza Jaffrey (Smash), Anna Chancellor (The Hour), Miranda Raison (24: Live Another Day), Hermione Norris (post–Wire in the Blood, which wasn’t a bad show either), Sophia Myles (Moonlight), and Lara Pulver (Sherlock).
Richard Armitage (Robin Hood, The Hobbit, Strike Back, Into the Storm) gets his own separate mention because he’s Richard Armitage, who makes everything awesome when he turns up. This is particularly true when he’s playing Adam’s successor, Lucas North, who was possibly Spooks‘ most complicated character and gave the show a shot in the arm when he was hired in series seven. If your show can go from Matthew Macfadyen to Rupert Penry-Jones to Richard Armitage, you are doing something very right.Then there are the show’s many guest stars, including (but very much not limited to) Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, Star Trek), Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings), Hugh Laurie (House), Anthony Head (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and Star Wars‘ Ian McDiarmid. Emperor Palpatine was on this show, guys.
All of these people elevated Spooks from just an entertaining spy thriller into a quality drama that was able to sustain itself for 10 series. They crafted deep characters, wrung everything they could out of the show’s many plot-twisty moments, and provided the substance that set it apart from the would-be thrillers we seem to see every TV season. Between the writing, which really kept you guessing (and/or shouting or crying) and the ability to watch such an excellent collection of actors, it was no wonder this show lasted almost a decade. It was truly some of the best of British television. If you’re an Anglophile, you’d better have seen it.
So it’s a bit fantastic that the show is getting a second life through The Greater Good, which looks to uphold the high standard of its TV predecessor. Why? Probably because it’s written by the show’s last head writers, directed by the man who helmed the pilot episode, and involves several returning characters. This is all on top of the fact that Jon Snow and Walter O’Brien are going to slug it out. Check out the trailer:
It’ll likely be a while before the movie makes its way to American shores, and I can spend a Friday afternoon trying—and probably failing—to not throw popcorn at a cinema screen. But I feel confident that the film is going to do at least some justice to what was a fantastic thrill ride. And if the arrival of the movie means we can get more people to check out one of TV’s best spy capers, then that’s the best part of all.
Spooks: The Greater Good premieres in UK cinemas this Friday. A U.S. release date is TBA. The complete Spooks/MI-5 series is available on DVD through BBC Home Entertainment.