"Spooks" 24/9/2010

 (Written shortly after the credits rolled. Sometimes I write reviews of TV programmes, especially when they're terrible, or full of plot holes.)

Just got round to watching the first episode of the new series, and glad to see that it's moving ever further into its own alternative reality. Jo's dead, and romantic Harry judges that weeping, lilies and large black hats mean that a funeral is the very best place to propose to Ruth. Suspecting latent necrophilia, she turns him down.

Meanwhile, Sir Guy of Gisbourne out of BBC's Robin Hood is boarding a well-used, i.e. rusty, oil tanker in a Mediterranean port, together with a fat Slavic (i.e. bearded) type and a good-looking blonde woman, who the Slavic chap berates and later slaps about a bit. So, she'll be the prostitute, then. On further examination, she turns out to be Madame de Pompadour out of Doctor Who. There are a couple of other passengers, and they are Arabic, which, in the world of Spooks is shorthand for Al-Quiada.

The captain seems to be Balkan, as are many of the crew. However, shortly after sailing, the tanker is boarded by Arabic pirates. Yes, Al-Quaida, of course, and they all greet the Arabic passenger (their leader) with cries of "Shalom!" Look, don't bother, I know, alright? Just before the inevitable bursts of AK-47 gunfire, Sir Guy discovers that the Slav has a container aboard that has been welded shut. While the rest of the crew and passengers are rounded up, and one is shot just to prove how hard the gang are, Sir Guy and Madame de Pompadour hide. As terrorists don't know what a passenger manifest is, and cannot count, nobody misses them, not even the other few passengers. They probably weren't Robin Hood or Doctor Who fans.

Sir Guy gets a message to the Captain, who tells the terrorists that something is wrong with the engine and he has to fix it. They meet, apparently inside the engine, where the Captain reveals that he is not Balkan at all, but SBS, which is jolly handy. He arranges for Sir Guy and Madame de Pompadour to get off the tanker in one of the lifeboats, and then rejoins his crew. As Guy and Madame are trying to do this, they are discovered by a couple of terrorists. Sir Guy kills one of them, but is just about to be killed by the other one when a shot rings out and the terrorist drops dead - killed by Madame de Pompadour, who reveals that she is a private security consultant, undercover as a prostitute. Which is, again, jolly handy.

They are shortly captured by the terrorists, though. Luckily, there seems to have been a change in priorities, and they are not killed, but simply locked in an empty container. I imagine the terrorists had a meeting, or something - "Even though they killed two of our guys, they can't be that dangerous, can they? Look, if you see them, just lock them up. We're Al-Quiada, we don't want to get a reputation for indiscriminate killing, do we?"

Back at the London HQ, Harry and Ruth are giving each other Glances, which the rest of the staff are too busy to notice, because it's All Kicking Off, Edna. The terrorists have switched off the tankers unique identifying signal, so the Spooks don't know where it is or where it's going; although the smart money, apparently, is on Plymouth. The Queen is to name a new Navy ship, so it looks like some kind of aquatic 9/11 is on the cards. Luckily, by using computers, the Spooks have identified Mr Big, and he lives in London. They employ subterfuge to get him to send an email, enabling their IT whizz-kid to get his address. He's a weird whizz-kid, too, unable to take any action without saying it - "Identifying router path... reverse engineering IP address... maybe I'll have KFC tonight..." A team of police with rifles, goggles and those black Nazi-looking helmets are despatched to Mr Big's home.

Meanwhile, on the tanker, the terrorists and the fat Slav are leaving, taking the passengers and crew (who really ought to realise that their life expectancy can be measured in minutes) with them, but allowing the Captain to stay aboard. There's a lot of "Shalom"-ing again, nobody questions whether anyone actually knows Arabic - and they leave one of their companions to tell the Captain what to do. In the locked container, Guy and Madame hear two splashes, as of lifeboats being launched and accelerating away.

The Captain kills the terrorist and switches on the identifier thing. In London, the tanker reappears on someone's screen, and the be-goggled cops are stood down. The Captain releases Guy and Madame, they verify that the welded shut container is now both open and empty, yet no lifeboats are gone. In a series of dazzling computer-assisted plot twists, it is revealed that the fat bloke supplies fast submarines and that the terrorists are heading to the Houses of Parliament in a couple of explosive-packed examples of fat bloke's wares. (They are, indeed, fast, as they seem to cover the distance from the Bay of Biscay to the Thames Barrier in less than two hours.) It's not a problem, of course - simply close the Barrier and the bad people will go boom there. Let's hope it's not a high tide tonight, eh, kids? You know, what with the Thames Barrier being all blown up and that.

Except that there's a problem - someone's hijacked the Barrier computer system, it can't be closed!

Harry springs into action - "It's Mr Big, we'll force him to release the system! Go cops!" The police bust down the door of Mr Big's semi, thrust him and his Asian (uh-oh...) wife to the floor, barking orders which seem to baffle them. "We don't know anything about a Thames Barrier..." Other cops have raced upstairs, where they find Mr Big's teenage, half-Asian (uh-oh...) daughter in traditional Asian dress (UH-OH!), pouring petrol over herself from a handy jerry can and brandishing a lighter, while, next to her, a computer shows details of the Thames Barrier system. We know this, because there's a massive header on the screen that reads "Thames Barrier System".

Incidentally, I bet her mother had been nagging her about this - "Honestly, Christine, why you have to store petrol in your room, I don't know. You're fifteen, it's not as if your car is likely to run out of juice, is it? And you were up to all hours playing that Thames Barrier game last night, I don't know what you see in it, really I don't."

Young Ms Big's lighter is smacked out of her hand, so she gets her pet lip out and sits on the bed, glaring at the cops, and Sir Guy, who has just arrived. Screaming "Tell us the password!" has precisely the same effect as screaming "You're not to see that boy again!" would have on any fifteen year old girl, i.e. sullen silence where the unsaid "F'koff, 'smylife" is fairly bouncing off the walls.

Realising that information is not going to be forthcoming, Sir Guy goes for extreme interrogation. "Get her mother up here!" He presses an automatic against Mum's head - "Tell us! Or I'll shoot!" Luckily, in the parallel world that is "Spooks", Ms Big stops behaving like a fifteen year old and tells them exactly what they want, rather than saying the more likely "So? I don't care, shoot the bitch."

The Barrier is raised, but... too late! The subs are through it! How the Spooks know this is never explained, given that they never knew where the subs were before this moment, but trying to point this out leads to the person who is watching with you crying, "Oh, shut up, I want to see it, not discuss it!", accompanied by a blow of some force, I can report.

Harry has a tough choice to make. Only he knows that there's an EMP bomb in a chamber under Parliament ("But surely the people who installed it - ow!") that, if detonated, will generate a pulse one kilometre wide, taking out both subs and any heart pacemakers in the area. Harry takes a bullet, bites it, dials a certain number and utters the fateful words "On my mark..." A pulse is generated, the subs fall to the river bed, several elderly people clutch their chests, and Her Majesty's Brittanic Isles are safe once more. Incidentally, I'd love to have that telephone number, just so that I could call it and say "On my mark... I'd like a Hawaiian Special with extra jalapenos. This is Domino's isn't it?"

In a short coda, Harry and Ruth meet on a bridge over the Thames. It's night, and London is quiet. "So..." Harry muses, "I only killed nine people, then." Ruth reassures him - "Yes. The generators at St. Thomas' Hospital kicked in just in time." And the credits roll, preventing us seeing Ruth begging Harry not to watch the news when he gets home, what with an EMP pulse being certain to take out any emergency generator system, also every electronic device in the City, including cars, and that the one kilometre reach of the pulse includes the direction "Up". In other words, all the patients in the hospital who were on life-support have had their support withdrawn in a rather terminal way, the Stock Market has been unable to trade, the Bank of England has been blind to a number of moves that now mean the pound is worth slightly less than a turnip, and Flight 39 from London City Airport to Guernsey has crashed onto the Houses of Parliament.

I expect it'll all be repaired by next week, though.