Ten Things To Know About The Spooks Movie

EMPIRE
WORDS PHIL DE SEMLYEN



The Spooks Movie – YES, THEY’RE MAKING A SPOOKS MOVIE! – is freshly underway on MI5’s home turf in London with running, shooting and people shouting “the package is down, the package is down!” at each other. Calling the shots on this bigger budget espionage-athon is director Bharat Nalluri. The series veteran has the tricky task of extending the show’s hour-long format into a feature-length thriller without jettisoning the character beats that made it so popular or palely imitating the James Bonds and Jason Bournes of this world. How will he do it? Well, as he explained, he’s got some aces up his sleeve. Here’s ten of them.

 1 THE CANVAS IS BIGGER
The plot sees MI5's Head of Counter-Terrorism Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) in deep when big bad Adam Qasim escapes and immediately sets about planning more atrocities. As Spooks fans will know, the penalty for that kind of blunder can be severe, especially with bureaucrats like Joint Intelligence Committee chief Oliver Mace (the returning Tim McInnerny) around. Which he is. "There's a reality to it, so it's got to land in a world that is real," director Bharat Nalluri explains of the set-up. "And the canvas is huge now."

2 IT'S THE PEARCE ULTIMATUM
There were moments in Spooks when the only people who didn't want to kill Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) seemed to be his mum and his Scotch supplier – and, for all we knew, his mum was having second thoughts. The IRA, Hamas, the KGB, the FSB, most of the Home Office... you name it, he's annoyed it. As Nalluri explains, the movie kicks off in exactly the same vein. Harry disappears off the grid in a manner even Sherlock Holmes would find impressively melodramatic. Suffice to say it involves swapping Thames House for the actual Thames in a faux-suicide that should throw his many enemies off the scent. As Harry goes all ghost protocol, a new face emerges to get to save an imperilled agency. It belongs to one 'Will Crombie', an old operative of Pearce's played by Kit 'John Schnnnooo' Harington. Can he save his erstwhile boss? We have no idea. They don't put that stuff on the press release.

9 ZOE WON'T BE COMING BACK...
Sadly for old-school Spookies, Keeley Hawes' decommissioned agent, Zoe Reynolds, will not be de-decommissioned for Spooks: The Greater Good, presumably because of the amount of paperwork involved and the fact that Hawes is now happily ensconced in BBC2 crime drama Line Of Duty. "Sadly not Zoe, no," confirms Nalluri when Empire asks if she'll return from her Chilean exile to rejoin the good fight. Maybe she met that South American guy after all.

10 ...BUT TOM MIGHT BE
Hearthrob super-spook Tom Quinn, a man with a ruinous love life and, come to think of it, career, is still a firm favourite in these parts. Matthew Macfadyen's character, the possible result of accidental gene splice of Ethan Hunt and Droopy Dog, returned at the end of season ten as a private sector operative harbouring some long-dormant loyalties to his former MI5 colleagues. Surely he'll back again for the movie? "Look, we brought Tom back in the very last episode of the last series," Nalluri straight-bats. "Make of that what you will!" Yes, then.


READ MORE HERE: http://www.empireonline.com/features/spooks-movie-ten-things

Matthew Macfadyen, Richard Armitage: EXCLUSIVE: 'Spooks' Film 'In The Works' According To 'Mayday' Star Peter Firth, Who Played MI5 Boss Harry Pearce In Spy Drama (HUFF POST)

Much-loved spy drama 'Spooks' could make the move to the big screen, with one of its stars revealing that there is a script in the works, being penned by the original writers of the hit series.

"There is a script kind of in the machine," HuffPostUK has learned from actor Peter Firth, who played MI5 chief Harry Pearce throughout the ten series of the popular drama.

"They should make it," he adds. "It's not like it's a gamble with this one. But it costs a lot, and there's not a lot of money to go round at the moment."

This would suit Firth, who previously told HuffPostUK that he wished for a happier ending for his character with longtime colleague and barely-expressed love - Ruth Evershed, played by Nicola Walker. Viewers of the series finale in October 2011 watched goggle-eyed, as Ruth became one of Spooks' huge number of agents to fall for her country, or in the actors' case, the dramatic storyline.

MurielThePrecious

READ MORE: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/25/spooks-film-peter-firth-harry-pearce-mayday_n_2948079.html

Matthew Macfadyen and Hugh Laurie in Spooks - Is this too much of a good thing or what?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE8_pBewNYw&feature=player_embedded#!

'Spooks' stars: Where are they now? - pictures Published Wednesday, May 23 2012, 8:01am EDT | By Morgan Jeffery |(DIGITAL SPY)

The former Lucas North - Richard Armitage - 

will play Thorin Oakenshield in Peter Jackson's 'Hobbit' movies.

Peter Firth will shortly be seen in historical drama 'World Without End' - 

he'll always be Harry to us!

Matthew Macfadyen (Tom Quinn) has carved out a film career with roles in 

'Pride and Prejudice' and 'The Three Musketeers'.

David Oyelowo has kept busy, popping up in 

'The Last King of Scotland' and 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes'.

Hermione Norris has become a familiar face in UK drama and 

will next be seen in ITV1 thriller 'A Mother's Son'.

Rupert Penry-Jones (Adam Carter) is currently 

starring in BBC One's 'Silk'.

READ MORE:  http://www.digitalspy.com/british-tv/s120/spooks/i410388-8/spooks-the-cast-then-and-now-rupert-penry-jones.html

David Oakes will have cameo on Pillars of the Earth Sequel - World Without End (DAVID OAKES)

Channel 4 has acquired the rights to World Without End, the follow-up to medieval drama Pillars of the Earth, which it showed in late 2010.

The eight-part series adapted from Ken Follett’s sequel is set 150 years later in the same fictional town of Kingsbridge, and features some of the descendants of the original characters from Pillars of the Earth. Miranda Richardson stars alongside Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon and Spooks’s Peter Firth.

The co-production between Tandem, Take 5 and Galafilm is made in association with director Ridley Scott’s production company Scott Free Films.


Read further:  http://david-oakes.co.uk/content/world-without-end-channel-4-acquires-rights

Peter Firth's top 10 moments from MI-5 (Spooks)

Spooks 10 – A look back at Section D

By Bill Young ⋅ December 11, 2011

 

Tellyspotting

 

Filed Under BBC, Downton Abbey, MI5, PBS, peter firth, Spooks, spy

 

 

 

Time to shelve the Downton Abbey 2 talk for a day. Everyone already has the DVR set for Sunday, January 8, 2012 for the second series premiere as part of PBS’ Masterpiece series. Time to turn our attention to, perhaps, the best television series, bar none….Spooks, or MI-5, in the United States.
With the final series set to premiere in April on public television stations across the U.S., it’s time to prepare, America, for what the U.K. already knows. For a series such as Spooks to remain fresh and continue to keep audiences coming back week after week, you need more than your share of memorable moments. Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) picked his top-10 moments from the first 9 seasons of the series for the Radio Times. Here are the first five. To me one of the most memorable only made it to #8 in Harry’s complete list in the Radio Times – the bomb in Tom’s house from series 1, episode 6. Oh, well. How did you fare?

• 1. Danny’s death (Series 3 Ep 10)

As with many Spooks deaths, you wouldn’t have expected it. Harry had to choose which of Danny and Fiona had to die and Danny makes the choice for him by calling the villain “a death worshipping fascist”. He then gets shot in the head.

• 2. The deep-fat fryer (Series 1 Ep 2)

Lisa Faulkner, that lovely girl from Holby City was not only killed, but killed in a thoroughly gruesome way. It was done for impact and it worked. Everyone tuned in the following week. Cynical but, hey, it’s TV

• 3. Adam’s death (Series 7 Ep 1)

People knew Adam [Rupert Penry Jones] was leaving but, like Adam’s exit, the details can still surprise. Frequently you read scenes and you think “They won’t shoot that” and frequently they don’t because it’s too difficult or too implausible, but they really pulled it off with Adam’s death in the car bomb.

• 4. Tom’s decommissioning (Series 3 Ep 2)

You can usually tell when actors are destined for great things, and that was definitely the case with Matthew Macfadyen. When you see Matthew in full flow – as he was with Tom Quinn being forced to retire – you know that you’re in the room with something special.

• 5. Colin wells’s hanging (Series 5 Ep 1)

One of the Spooks’ mantras has always been “Kill your heroes” – even if they’re not right in the frontline. Geeky Colin was a fan favourite so his end was almost more shocking than one of the leads.

The Telegraph picked their top-10 memorable moments just prior to the premiere in the UK and, with only one exception, they match Harry’s. Have to say, I’m with the Telegraph on this one. Great, great scene.

• What’s your poison? – when veteran Section D head Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) wears black leather gloves indoors, it spells trouble for someone. So it proved in series nine, when he learned that retired Home Secretary Nicholas Blake (Robert Glenister) was behind the bomb that killed Ros Myers. Pearce visited Blake’s Highland retreat with a bottle of single malt to toast old times. The whisky was poisoned. Vengeful Harry watched his former boss take a dram and die grovelling in front of a roaring log fire.

http://tellyspotting.org/2011/12/11/spooks-10-a-look-back-at-section-d/

 

For their eyes only: Sam Mendes shakes up his Bond cast with a top secret

Sam Mendes wanted to spring a surprise on his high-calibre cast gathered at Pinewood studios for a script reading of the latest 007 adventure.

As the likes of Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem and Ralph Fiennes sat leafing through their scripts, each stamped ‘Highly Confidential’, with every page watermarked and coded, they must all have been wondering: who on earth could the Oscar-winning director be bringing in who might leave them shaken and (pleasantly) stirred?

Try Albert Finney, a legendary actor, revered by his peers and about to make his Bond debut at the age of 75.

Highly confidential: Sam Mendes (left) brought in actor Albert Finney (right) for the script reading

An executive close to the production told me: ‘It was one of those fabulous “This can’t get any better!” moments because Mendes has upped the game by bringing in Bardem and Fiennes — and they’ve already got Dame Judi Dench.

‘So you think, well, who else can they get to make this any classier?’

Finney, who has been in remission from cancer of the prostate for several years, will play a Foreign Office mandarin with powers over the Secret Intelligence Service, described to me as a reasonably big role and full of class.

The part probably makes him M’s boss, though she — as played by Judi — might not see it that way.

 Interestingly, I thought Judi and Albert must surely have worked together before, because they were at the Old Vic in the late Fifties and early Sixties, but I could find no record of them ever having trodden the boards on the same stage or appearing in the same movie.

(If I’m wrong, I’m sure I’ll be set straight!) The thespians were joined at the studio by Naomie Harris who, as revealed here, will play Miss Moneypenny; Berenice Marlohe as the requisite femme fatale (are we past using the term ‘Bond girl’ in the 21st century?) and Rory Kinnear, who will play M’s chief of staff, Bill Tanner.

He will have more to do in this movie than when he played Tanner in Quantum Of Solace.

Ben Whishaw and Helen McCrory have as yet unspecified roles.

John LOGAN, who wrote Gladiator and who has been winning acclaim for his sublime script for the forthcoming film Coriolanus, has long toiled over the Bond 23 script.

And now Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, keepers of the Bond movie flame, have asked him to be involved in writing other screenplays based on Ian Fleming’s famous espionage officer.

Rehearsals and camera tests continue this week, and next week shooting will begin on Bond 23, which will be released next autumn on the 50th anniversary of the first Bond film, Dr No.

A hardy act to follow

Simply sublime: Freida Pinto

Freida Pinto plays a young woman from rural Rajasthan in Michael Winterbottom’s film Trishna, which was shown at the BFI London Film Festival.

It’s a simply sublime adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess Of The d’Urbervilles. I went in with no expectations whatsoever, and found myself hooked.

Freida, who was in Slumdog Millionaire and Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, plays Trishna and gives a performance that will break your heart as she’s taken away from her simple life and hurled into the big city by Riz Ahmed.

‘A lot of women like Trishna have accepted that they will just do what the men tell them. It’s down to tradition in certain places and a lot of women accept it. I’m lucky because my parents allowed me to study and to work,’ the actress told me.

Watch out for...

HAYLEY ATWELL, who will play a detective who mixes it up with Flying Squad officers Jack Regan and George Carter, played by the great Ray Winstone and Ben Drew (aka rapper Plan B). Director Nick Love’s big-screen version of The Sweeney is based on the TV classic that starred John Thaw and Dennis Waterman.

Love co-wrote the script with John Hodge and they have set the story in present-day London, where there are still Jack-the-lad cops and fast cars. Shooting starts next week, with Damian Lewis, Steven Mackintosh and Paul Anderson also starring.

The film will be released next autumn through Entertainment One.

Canny Rupert Preston of Vertigo Films is one of the film’s producers.

KEN STOTT, who will play the title role in Uncle Vanya, which will be directed in the West End next autumn by Lindsay Posner.

The production will use the adaptation of Chekhov’s drama that Christopher Hampton wrote for the Royal Court in 1970, with Paul Scofield.

Kim Poster, who is producing with Nica Burns, told me Hampton will be on hand at rehearsals to amend the script as needed, but the version used by director Anthony Page at the Royal Court will be the foundation.

Ms Poster told me she has spent some time securing all the various rights, and that the play will open at one of the West End theatres controlled by the Nimax group.



PETER FIRTH, who barked out ‘Harry Pearce’ as he answered his phone for the final time in Spooks, which ended its long run last Sunday after ten series.

The way it was left, made me wonder if Kudos and the BBC are planning to do occasional two-hour Spooks specials. I can’t deny I will miss Harry and his gang. I liked gutsy Lara Pulver in the final run, and all the men and women who were in Spooks before her.

EZRA MILLER, who is certainly one of the faces to watch at the movies this year — and next — thanks to his scorching performances in Lynne Ramsay’s incendiary movie We Need To Talk About Kevin, which stars Tilda Swinton, giving one of the year’s best performances.


Last night, Sandra stepped down from that role and is planning on leaving the movie business. Sad
Miller was in a crazy little film called Another Happy Day and stole it.

We Need To Talk About Kevin has become a smash at the box office and the BFI London Film Festival named it best picture at a ceremony on Wednesday.

The film festival has become one of the most important celebrations of cinema in the world, and I put that down to the efforts over the years of LFF’s artistic chief Sandra Hebron — one of the unsung stars of the movie world.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2054492/BAZ-BAMIGBOYE-For-eyes--Sam-Mendes-shakes-Bond-cast-secret.html#ixzz1c5cna2z0

Spooks: the final episode, so ludicrously silly it might just be true, review (spoilers)

The Telegraph

Benji Wilson reviews the final episode of BBC One spy series Spooks.

3.5

 

 

Nicola Walker and Peter Firth star as Ruth Evershed and Sir Harry Pearce in the BBC spy drama Spooks. Photo: BBC

By Benji Wilson

10:10PM BST 23 Oct 2011

If you’ve ever watched an episode of Spooks (BBC One, Sunday) you could probably have plotted most of last night’s final ever episode yourself. A major attack on London in the next 24 hours? Tick. Dead-eyed extremists bent on nothing less than total destruction? Tick. A clock on a wall counting down to Armageddon? Tick, tock, tick. And of course Harry and Ruth (Peter Firth and Nicola Walker) doing their doleful soul mate pas de deux, firing off aphorisms that have become ever more existential as the series has gone on: “With every lie we tell, our true selves get buried that little bit deeper.”

True Ruth, all too true. But really, is this the time for it? There’s a shaven-headed Russian on a passenger plane winging its way to Heathrow who might as well have “zealot” tattoed on his pate; he’s fidgeting with an attaché case in the toilets and you want to come over all Le Carré?

To be fair, Ruth has earned her close-up. We should take a minute to salute Nicola Walker, an actress who has squeezed every drop out of TV’s greatest ever largely dumbstruck doormat for the best part of a decade. Her scenes with Peter Firth, another fine player, have become self-contained little bubbles of weltschmerz within every recent episode.

And last night, as befits a grand finale, there was a lot to be schmerz-ed about. At one point or another, nuclear war, mass murder, patricide, filicide and a few other cides besides were all on the cards. An almighty denouement in a secret MoD bunker revealed that absolutely everyone had been telling dirty great stinking lies to everyone else over a period of more than 40 years. Harry’s secret son was not, in fact, his son. Elena (Alice Krige) was not a double agent but one of the Russian extremists herself – she had been playing Harry, not the other way round.

There was so little solid ground to stand on that things started getting a little Electric Kool-Aid – was this actually the final series of Spooks? (We believe so.) Was that Matthew Macfadyen turning up right at the end for a valedictory cameo to whack a Russian? (It was.) Could Spooks now merge with Downton Abbey to create a cross-channel Sunday night behemoth about the origins of MI5? (No.)

Normality returned with the death of Ruth, stabbed with a shard of glass by Harry’s son-who-wasn’t for trying to save his mother who Ruth had… let’s not go there. Ruth died in Harry’s arms.

You may sense from my tone that much of this final Spooks – and indeed all Spooks – was hokum. But it’s not that simple. Events of the last decade have reduced the distance between the laughably implausible and the horribly real to a very thin line. Spooks’s brilliance has been to tiptoe along that line from start to finish. It was first aired six months after 9/11, and ever since then a combination of actual events, political rhetoric and pandemic paranoia has lent it just enough credibility to perturb. Television for its time, you could say.

Spooks, Series 10 Finale, BBC One -Thrilling climax for long-running spy saga

The Arts Desk

by Adam SweetingMonday, 24 October 2011

 

 

If you don't know me by now... Ruth (Nicola Evershed) and Harry (Peter Firth) sign off

And now we faced the final curtain. Spooks responded with an inspired burst of hyperactivity and plots-within-plots, and even a micro-cameo from Matthew Macfadyen as Tom Quinn, the original head of Section D.

Up to now this hadn't been the finest of seasons, partly because the death of Richard Armitage's Lucas North at the end of series nine left a void which was never successfully filled. Lara Pulver never seemed comfortable as Erin Watts, Section D's new head, because she looked as if she'd been seconded from a modelling agency, while promoting Dimitri (Max Brown) up the batting order merely allowed him to become more faceless by the hour.

Apparently the plan was to put the will-the-won't-they relationship of Harry Pearce and Ruth Evershed at the centre of these final episodes, but since it was a clandestine kind of liaison at the best of times ("you and I are made of secrets," Ruth confided in the dying minutes of the final episode) there were never going to be any grandiose Dr Zhivago moments. However, Simon Russell Beale as Home Secretary William Towers (pictured below) rose masterfully to the occasion, being acerbic, opaque, avuncular, devious or ruthless as required, and his fraught interactions with Peter Firth's Harry have supplied many of the most memorable scenes.

Towers was at his wits' end again for most of these last laps, with good reason. The Americans were demanding Pearce's head on a plate for his role in the death of CIA man Jim Coaver, and when his MI5 team sprung him from American custody it looked like we'd heard the last of the Special Relationship (though it must be said that the Americans guarding Harry made Johnny English look moderately competent). The last straw for Towers was when Harry insisted he get the RAF to shoot down a Russian passenger jet heading for Heathrow because it had a suicide bomber on board, then changed his mind with nine seconds to go (Lara Pulver as Erin, pictured below).

This whole series has been about a proposed political partnership between Russia and the UK, a canny bit of plotting which is not quite ridiculous enough to be completely implausible, and also a deft inversion of the Cold War spy-drama convention where Russia means Bad. Always will for Harry, of course. The downside was we had far too much of the Gavrik family, who all spoke preposterous KGB English like the "comparethemarket" meerkats doing a vodka commercial. On the other hand, it did offer plenty of scope for a climactic unravelling of all the lies, counter-lies and betrayals that lay coiled up in Harry and Elena Gavrik's past (Alice Krige as Elena and Peter Firth as Harry, pictured below).

Behind Elena's smooth and icy exterior, it transpired, lay a bleak Siberian winter, which enabled her to plot airborne mass murder as calmly as the rest of us might butter a piece of toast. Harry had been torturing himself for the way he'd manipulated Elena into becoming a double agent decades earlier, only to discover that she'd been super-treble-manipulating him all along. He was the quarry, not the hunter. "You're 10 times the spy I ever was," Harry grudgingly conceded. Still, he must have been relieved that the morbid and petulant Sasha wasn't his son after all, as the flint-hearted Elena had led him to believe.

You couldn't say that Ruth (Nicola Walker) had the last laugh, but her dogged professionalism and instinct for a wrong 'un left her miles ahead of Harry when the chips were down. Had it not been for her inspired one-minute-to-midnight intervention, everybody including the Home Secretary would have ended up in jail or at the very least on the dole. Walker's performance has been a sustained study in antisocial dowdiness, and in its quiet way a small masterpiece of TV acting.

Spook - The End (Ian Wylie)

Spooks: The End

By IAN WYLIE



“YOU and I, we’re made of secrets.”

Standing by a familiar estuary as we hold our breath to see what will happen.

Spooks series 10, last ever episode.

It begins in Moscow, where a man with a case is catching a flight to London.

Is this jet destined to cause a catastrophe in the British capital?

Meanwhile we learn exactly what killed young Tariq (Shazad Latif).

Harry (Peter Firth) is in the hands of the CIA and on his way to an uncertain future in America.

But we know he won’t be spending this final hour in the boot of a car.

So it’s not giving too much away to reveal that he is rescued to get on with the rest of the plot.

A grateful Sir Harry informing Dimitri: “This is likely to come up in your pay review.”


"OK. I won't tell anyone how it ends."

Several truths emerge as the clock ticks down to the moment when we must say goodbye to Spooks.

Ms Evershed telling Mrs Gavrik: “I see he’s given more than I thought possible.”

While Russian Air Flight 474 continues its potentially deadly journey towards Heathrow with 312 people on board.

It’s tense. Very tense.

At one stage I was convinced Home Secretary William Towers (Simon Russell Beale) was going to spontaneously combust.

All the main series 10 players who have survived to episode six feature as we near 10pm on Sunday and the end of a TV era.

Including Ilya (Jonathan Hyde), Sasha (Tom Weston-Jones), Erin (Lara Pulver), Dimitri (Max Brown) and Calum (Geoffrey Streatfeild).

And we await a kiss.

Dedicated fans will already know that this farewell episode also includes a (very brief) return for a face from the past.

The media and some of those fans have known for some time who it is.

But I think it’s a shame that the identity of this character was revealed by a newspaper yesterday (Monday).

Why spoil part of the final hour for the sake of a cheap story?

You’ll get none of that here.

So while there’s so much more to say, it’s probably best to stop.

Aside to say…

The ending was, for me, about as perfect as I could have hoped for.

Especially the closing minutes of this ten series Spooks’ journey.

As I’ve said in this blog many times, we all see things in different ways – so I know not everyone will agree.

But I hope most will view this as a classic farewell episode, beautifully done by all concerned.

With a magnificent final line.

***********************************************************************

There will be a final Spooks blog from me after the last episode has been screened.

I’ve seen 10.6 several times now and will be watching again as it goes out “live”.

Before posting a few farewell reflections.

As Spooks ends its nine-year run on TV, a spy writer reflects on the lure of the second oldest profession.

The Telegraph

 

What’s the secret of Britain's love affair with spies?

 

So that’s it, then. No more breathless meetings on the Grid, starch-dry quips from Harry Pearce or agents being plunged into deep-fat fryers. After 10 series, 86 episodes, three Baftas and some of the silliest plots on television, the BBC drama Spooks finally comes in from the cold tomorrow night, mission over. What to do? As a self-confessed espionage junkie, I haven’t missed an episode since the programme began back in the spring of 2002. That’s three and a half days of my life spent watching Section D, a team of improbably goodlooking MI5 officers, battle against Al-Qaeda, white supremacists, Russians, Chinese, Iranians, pro-lifers, Columbian drug cartels, Iraqis, Irish dissidents, Israelis and, of course, themselves.

Spooks was good on the enemy within, particularly when actors wanted out. It was one reason why the programme attracted more than 7 million viewers at the height of its popularity, and why it’s been exported around the world. (In America, it’s shown as MI5, in Slovenia as Tajni Agenti.) Who can forget when Tom Quinn, played by Matthew Macfadyen, shot Pearce, his boss, in the shoulder and walked off into the North Sea? Quinn returns tomorrow night for a fleeting appearance. Macfadyen was the best of the lead actors and audiences dropped below five million after he left in 2004. It took a while for his successor, Rupert Penry-Jones, to find his feet on the Grid, the office where they endlessly fretted in front of sleek computers.

His character, former MI6 officer Adam Carter, was an Arabic-speaking toff from south of the river. But he went on to provide some of the best Spooks moments when he was paired up with the steely Ros Myers, played by Hermione Norris, who waltzed onto the show in 2006 wearing her Belstaff black leather jacket. That year’s final episode ended on a typical cliffhanger, with us fearing that Myers and Carter had drowned while trying to save London from flooding (all in a day’s work).

Despite its high ratings, split screens and satellite graphics, Spooks has not been to everyone’s liking and there are those who won’t mourn its demise. David Cornwell, whose penname John le Carré is synonymous with the coolest espionage fiction, turned 80 this week. I doubt he will be on tenterhooks, waiting to see if Harry walks into the sunset with GCHQ linguist Ruth Evershed – surely the longest running on-off screen romance in television history.

“I don’t watch Spooks, it’s crap,” le Carré said last month. “I’m sorry. I have been in that world for almost half a century and once in it, you get a notion of what constrains you and what doesn’t. The idea that people just go around shooting and killing people and so on is crazy.” Ouch. Let’s hope he has never seen the US drama 24, that other seminal post-9/11 spy series, which had far more killings than Spooks.

 

The final episode of 'Spooks’ is at 9pm tomorrow on BBC1

TOP TEN MOMENTS ON SPOOKS (MI-5)

Spooks’s top 10 moments

As the gripping spy drama reaches its end, Michael Hogan relives Spooks's finest moments.

Hermione Norris as Ros Myers, who survived one memorable brush with death Photo: BBC

By Michael Hogan

7:00AM BST 19 Oct 2011

After 10 series and 86 episodes, BBC’s stylish espionage drama is being retired from active service. Here, we revisit the memorable incidents – some gory, some sinister, some shocking – that have kept viewers enthralled for a decade.

1. Frying tonight
The spy saga’s first and most notorious spook-slaying came early on, setting the tone for regular shocks thereafter. At the end of the second episode, Helen Flynn (Lisa Faulkner) had her head dunked in a sizzling deep fat fryer by a far Right extremist. It brought new meaning to the phrase “battered to death”, and there were 154 complaints to the Broadcasting Standards Commission.

2. The name’s North. Lucas North… or is it?
Moody Lucas North (Richard Armitage) took over as section leader in series seven. Two years later, a head-spinning twist revealed that he wasn’t Lucas North at all but John Bateman, a drug dealer who had bombed the British embassy in Dakar 15 years earlier, then killed the real North and assumed his identity.

3. Ros rises again
Sharp-tongued Ros Myers (Hermione Norris) joined Section D during the fifth series. The following year, a duplicitous Government bigwig (Anna Chancellor) injected her with a lethal nerve agent but in a Romeo & Juliet-esque twist, Ros was revived at her own funeral. The syringe had been switched for one containing a sedative that temporarily put her into a death-like state.

4. Tom takes work home with him
Section D’s first leader was Tom Quinn (Matthew Macfadyen), much loved for his flowing overcoats and sad eyes. Unlike his workaholic colleagues (“It’s MI5, not 9 to 5” was the original tag-line), Tom had a life outside Thames House and was dating a single mother. The couple moved in together and Tom had his house specially fortified to protect them. In the series one finale, however, he inadvertently brought home a laptop containing a bomb. Then he locked mother and daughter into the house with it. Tick, tick, tick...

5.  Eeny, meeny, miney… Oh
Sharp-dressed agent Danny Hunter (David Oyelowo) met his end in a most unexpected manner. At the end of series three, he and colleague Fiona Carter (Olga Sosnovska) were captured by Iraqi extremists. Section leader Adam Carter (Rupert Penry-Jones), Fiona’s husband, was given 30 seconds to choose which of them must be executed. Danny made the decision for him by goading the terrorist, calling him “a death worshipping fascist”, until he was shot in the head

6. Keeping up with Wynn-Jones
Mild-mannered analyst Malcolm Wynn-Jones (Hugh Simon) lasted eight series and became a cult favourite: tweedy, bookish, devoted to the job and his elderly mother. Although not a man of action, his technical talents saved lives. He retired to care for his mother until visited by the murky Lucas North in series nine. North wanted the mysterious “Albany” file but Malcolm smelled a rat and handed him a fake. Fans held their breath when the ruse was discovered and North stormed back to assassinate Malcolm – only to break into an empty, cleared-out house. Malcolm, wily to the last, is still out there somewhere.

7. Get Carter
Heart-throb Adam Carter was the show’s most popular leading man but after four years’ service, actor Rupert Penry-Jones moved onto pastures new. A series seven storyline saw al-Qaeda prime a car bomb to explode at a Remembrance Sunday ceremony. Carter heroically drove it to an unpopulated area, but was blown up in the process – a sequence shown in slo-mo for extra impact.

8 What’s your poison?
When veteran Section D head Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) wears black leather gloves indoors, it spells trouble for someone. So it proved in series nine, when he learned that retired Home Secretary Nicholas Blake (Robert Glenister) was behind the bomb that killed Ros Myers. Pearce visited Blake’s Highland retreat with a bottle of single malt to toast old times. The whisky was poisoned. Vengeful Harry watched his former boss take a dram and die grovelling in front of a roaring log fire.

9. Grievous bodily bra
Wise old bird Connie James (Gemma Jones) was dragged out of retirement by Harry to bolster the team in series six. When a colleague uncovered proof that she was a Russian mole, she did what any cornered lady would do – garroted him with the underwire from her bra and calmly removed the evidence from his pocket as he lay dying in a pool of his own blood.



10. And there’s a couple still to come…
There are memorable twists at the opening and climax of Sunday’s last ever episode (BBC One, 9.00pm). We suggest recording Downton, just this once, and watching Spooks as it logs off “the grid” for good.

• in

SPOOKS - PENULTIMATE EPISODE

Spooks: A Tortoise In The Garden

by IAN WYLIE

Going to the end of the line.

“WHAT do you have to show for all these years?

“I have a house and a wife and a son.

“And a tortoise in the garden.”

Ilya Gavrik is talking to Harry Pearce about finding love.

Spooks final series, last but one episode.

Where the long road nears its end with one last press on the accelerator pedal.

Starting with this penultimate 60 minutes.

Ilya has arrived on Sir Harry’s doorstep carrying a bottle of vodka.

Leading to another rare glimpse inside the home of the knighted one.

With a stash of vinyl albums in one corner.

Including, I like to believe, a copy of this, given to him by Ruth.


The best you can do is forgive

Episode 10.5 begins with Sasha also posing a few questions for Harry.

The CIA’s Jim Coaver is heading for the 11am flight to Rotterdam.

And Ruth is sitting at a new desk:

“Harry, I’m a civil servant now. I have a PA called Margot.”

Those waiting for Harry and Ruth to take centre stage may be pacified in these final two hours.

Harry: “I’m not exactly known for my tact. This is a man who proposed to you at a funeral, remember?”

Ruth: “Yeah, that’s true. You do have the most awful timing.”

Although there is plenty of other Spookstastic stuff going on as we await their fate.

Leading up to an emotional series finale which – at least for me – provides a fitting conclusion.

Done with considerable style by all involved.


Harry and Jim.
It’s fascinating to watch Peter Firth play Harry in the latter stages of this series, by which time he knew for certain Spooks was coming to an end.

This week our hero sets out on an extreme course of action to uncover the truth about who is behind the attacks on MI5.

While Ruth has property plans on the Suffolk coast.

Ms Evershed seeing action out in the field – at the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.

Back at that Russian Delegation Hotel, Elena tells her husband: “I think there are some shops in London I have yet to see.”

But we all know who she’s going to meet, don’t we?

There are the usual plot loopholes and quibbles that you could drive Harry’s Audi through if you wanted to.

But Spooks has always been about the suspension of disbelief – an entertainment, not a documentary.

As the episode nears its end, Harry prepares to leave his home.

Stopping in the kitchen to do something rather mundane but oh, so telling.

Another moment of Spooks’ brilliance, with no words of explanation required.

“This can’t be the end?” pleads Ruth.

With one episode to go, we know it’s not.

But my advice is to avert your eyes and ears when the “Next week” teaser pops up.

Wait seven days.

And enjoy what I believe will be regarded by many as Spooks’ finest hour.

Spooks continues on BBC1 at 9pm on Sunday.

MATTHEW MACFADYEN - SPOOKS SERIES 10, EPISODE 6

MATTHEW MACFADYEN WILL APPEAR IN THE LAST EPISODE OF SPOOKS ACCODING TO BBC ONE

Episode 6
Episode 6 of 6, Spooks, Series 10
Duration: 58 minutes

Harry finally discovers who is behind the recent attacks on the UK, but will confirming these suspicions come at too high a cost to himself and his team? In a highly dramatic climax to the 10th series of Spooks, who will survive?

As the man responsible for the kidnapping of their deputy-director, Harry is handed over to the CIA, ready for deportation to the US. But when fresh evidence surfaces that there are darker forces at work, his loyal team break Harry out of his enforced custody.

Harry's suspicions now lead him to another of his former Cold War adversaries. But events are soon thrown into turmoil when Elena announces detailed knowledge of a new attack on the UK. Harry and Ruth question Elena. A commercial passenger jet is approaching London and cannot be contacted. Is it a 9/11-style suicide mission? Or do Harry's real enemies want to trigger a bigger conflict by tricking him into giving the order to shoot down an entirely innocent planeload of civilians?

Can Harry really trust Elena? As the ultimate spy, Harry will surely avert a national disaster, but not without the greatest personal sacrifice he has ever known.


Credits
Harry Pearce Peter Firth.
Ruth Evershed Nicola Walker.
Dimitri Levendis Max Brown.
Erin Watts Lara Pulver.
Calum Reed Geoffrey Streatfeild.
Sasha Gavrik Tom Weston-Jones.
Elena Gavrik Alice Krige.
Ilya Gavrik Jonathan Hyde.
Home Secretary William Towers Simon Russell Beale.
Pavel Zykov Andrew Byron.
X-ray operator Irena Michi.
CIA Officer Leemore Marrett Jr.

TOM QUINN MATTHEW MACFADYEN.

Mikhail Levrov Jeffrey Wickham.
Chief of Airstaff David Cann.
Flight Attendant Ursula Valentinovich.
FSB Officer Vincent Montuel.
Young Harry Sam Reid.
Young Elena Jenni Herzberg.
Director Bharat Nalluri.
Producer Chris Fry.
Writer Jonathan Brackley.
Writer Sam Vincent.

SPOOKS - FINAL SEASON

Spooks: Sands of Time
by Ian Wylie

Alice Krige as Elena Gavrik and Peter Firth as Harry Pearce
“I’M afraid we don’t have very much time.”

Sir Harry speaks for all Spooks fans in episode two of the final series.

As those sands of time continue to flow inexorably towards The End.
He’s actually talking to former Russian love Elena (Alice Krige) when they meet alone in a theatre during an exclusive afternoon ballet performance.

Against the backdrop of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.

A piece of music the composer dedicated to a student he fell in love with but was prevented from marrying.

Elena and Harry’s FSB son Sasha (Tom Weston-Jones) is backstage, trying to prevent his mother from being exposed as an MI5 spy.

But how far will Sasha go to save her?

Many are hoping that Harry (Peter Firth) and Ruth (Nicola Walker) will waltz off together at the end of this farewell run.

Surviving those bloodthirsty Spooks writers to dance along the Embankment hand in hand.

Viewers of that persuasion will be heartened to hear Harry say this week: “Ruth, you’re the only one I can turn to.”

Among other things.

But those writers aren’t in the mood to give us too many crumbs of comfort.


Tom Weston-Jones as Sasha Gavrik
Ruth has her hands on Harry’s MI5 Personnel File and we get a quick glimpse:

Educated: Oxford. Sandhurst.

Military career: Light Blue Dragoons.

Security Services career: Section A secondment. Northern Ireland Service. Death of Bill Crombie…

Nothing new there. And no sign of any personal surveillance of tea shops in Devon.

Intelligence analyst Ruth has more pressing matters on her mind.

Secret MI5 files on several of their “top grade assets” working in the field have been stolen.

Not good news for those involved as their identities are revealed one by one.

Or for the temper of grumpy Home Secretary William Towers (Simon Russell Beale), who has just one scene – with Harry – this week.


Simon Russell Beale as William Towers and Nicola Walker as Ruth Evershed
There’s no sign in episode two of Towers’ interest in Miss Evershed – professionally or otherwise.

That will have to wait for episode three.

Unless he’s kidnapped by militant members of The Harry and Ruth Fan Club.

Meanwhile a frustrated Tariq (Shazad Latif) is trying to solve the puzzle of just who stole a laptop containing those MI5 secrets.

Was it the CIA? Or will this final series story arc turn out to be a little more complex than that?

Episode two contains a shock or two, demonstrating yet again how ruthless the spying game can be.

No wonder Harry asks Erin (Lara Pulver): “What are your feelings about whisky?”

Adding: “I’ve ruined the lives of people I care about. It’s part of what we do.”

It’s another brilliant “Harry reflecting in his office” scene from Peter Firth.

A lonely father-of-three telling single mother Erin about the sacrifices that have to be made in their line of work.

And a reminder that Peter’s time as this iconic character will soon be over.

So best enjoy what’s left while we can.

Preferably with a glass of Harry’s scotch to hand.

You may need it.

Source: @ianwylie (Twitter), lifeofwylie.com

THE TOP TEN SPOOKS MOMENTS - by Peter Firth

The List: top ten Spooks moments

Harry Pearce himself picks his favourite moments from the spy drama

 

 

Peter Firth

9:40 AM, 18 September 2011

1. Danny's death (Series 3 Episode 10)
As with many Spooks deaths, you wouldn't have expected it. Harry had to choose which of Danny and Fiona had to die and Danny makes the choice for him by calling the villain "a death worshipping fascist". He then gets shot in the head.
2. The deep-fat fryer (Series 1 Episode 2)
Lisa Faulkner, that lovely girl from Holby City was not only killed, but killed in a thoroughly gruesome way. It was done for impact and it worked. Everyone tuned in the following week. Cynical but, hey, it's TV
3. Adam's death (Series 7 Episode 1)
People knew Adam [Rupert Penry Jones] was leaving but, like Adam's exit, the details can still surprise. Frequently you read scenes and you think "They won't shoot that" and frequently they don't because it's too difficult or too implausible, but they really pulled it off with Adam's death in the car bomb.
4 Tom's decommissioning (Series 3 Episode 2)
You can usually tell when actors are destined for great things, and that was definitely the case with Matthew Macfadyen. When you see Matthew in full flow - as he was with Tom Quinn being forced to retire - you know that you're in the room with something special.
5. Colin wells's hanging (Series 5 Episode 1)
One of the Spooks' mantras has always been "Kill your heroes" - even if they're not right in the frontline. Geeky Colin was a fan favourite so his end was almost more shocking than one of the leads.
6. Zoe's happy ending (Series 3 Episode 6)

7. Connie kills Ben (Series 7, Ep 7)
This was a real coup de théâtre - and with the underwire from her bra, too. You never know you're going to make it through an episode until you've got the script - and even then it can change.
8. The bomb in Tom's house (Series 1, Ep 6)
For the climax to the first series we locked a mother and daughter in a house with a ticking bomb. That left me speechless.
9. Ruth says goodbye to Harry (Series 5 Episode 5)
This was a real wrench because it felt like Harry's chance at happiness slipped away.
10. Adam rescuing Ros (Series 6 Episode 8)
Two of Spooks' finest characters - and a couple of great actors Hermione Norris and Rupert Penry Jones - at the absolute top of their game in scenes that were both thrilling and poignant.

SPOOKS SERIES 10, EPISODE 1 REVIEW - spoilers!!!

Spooks series 10 episode 1 review

Rob Mclaughlin

After almost a decade of espionage and drama, Spooks has reaches its tenth and final season. Here’s Rob’s review of a great opening episode...

Published on Sep 19, 2011

This review contains spoilers.

So this is it: the last season of Spooks. Has as it really been nearly a decade since Harry and company first appeared on our screens? And now, as they say, the end is near – but not just yet, since there are still a few old Cold War skeletons in the cupboard to cause the team members of the Grid a few headaches.
But first things first. After last season’s literal character assassination of Lucas (in what can only be described as very quick rewrite to accommodate Richard Armitage’s departure), it all got rather silly and melodramatic towards the end. There were some important repercussions, though, as Harry was found guilty of prioritising Ruth’s life rather than the protection of state secrets, and has spent the past few months on garden leave.
During his tribunal, we see that, even though that simmering passion for Ruth is there, Harry is still the professional, and the best bad-ass on television, sparring with the committee and fully justifying his actions during last season and the whole Albany affair.
With a reprieve granted by the committee, Harry is reinstated back in the team (which has some terms, which we will come to later), but it seems it’s all change back at HQ, as Section D now has a new leader – an intelligent, secretive new agent by the name of Erin Watts who, it seems, holds Harry in very high esteem.
Erin’s not the only new face. We also get a new tech agent called Callum, who quite frankly, seems a bit of an arse. A cocky, brash new player who, within minutes, rubs the entire team (and the audience) up the wrong way, and hopefully will be cannon fodder in the next few weeks. It’s been a long time since there’s been an unlikeable character working in Section D. But what of last season’s other recruit, Beth?
Well, it seems Ms Miles has been given the sack, with her departure summed up with an off-hand, “Oh, we had to fire her because of her past”. What a send off.
While Jo, Ros or numerous other members at least got a bit of a memorial, it seems Beth was simply handed her P45 and told “We wish you luck in any future endeavours”. Never mind, at least we still have Dimitri (who my wife told me look very hot in a tuxedo), who really is filling the action hero shoes that Ros and Lucas took over the past few years.
With the status quo established, we find that even though the team are back together, there are things stirring in the upper echelons of power, and that Harry’s reinstatement has come at a cost, as the Home Secretary was the one that played out the stay of execution for Harry’s trial. But he had his reasons – namely, that the government is changing tack, and are, it seems, happy to become best friends with their former Soviet arch-enemies.
This causes a lot of trouble, as Harry, who was one of the main British agents during the Cold War, has he spent the past 30 years making friends in the CIA. He’s become a sworn enemy of the KGB in the process, and the feeling of having to put on the charm offensive for his former opposite number is hard for him to swallow, especially when it seems Harry has a rather personal history with some of his supposed enemies.
With the Russians in the UK on a diplomatic or ambassadorial role, the team finds that somebody is out to try and take them out permanently. From the death of an old school spy colleague of Harry’s, to somebody using his old drop points, pass codes and security to contact his former liaison on the Russian side, the shady world of counter-espionage and double agents comes back to haunt the current powers that be, and it seems that, as well as hiding state secret,s Harry has a few other secrets that land a lot more closer to home.
The new power-players, Ilya Gavrick (played with fantastic aloofness by Jonathan Hyde), Harry’s former opposite, ex-KGB officer and current oligarch, his wife (played by former Borg queen Alice Krige) and their son Sasha, seem to be the focus of this season.
This seems an apt way of finishing off a decade of Spooks stories that, from what we have seen already, will play out on both a global and very personal scale. Will Harry save the day? Of course. But the big question is, will he get the girl, and will he finally put his feet up, sit back happily with some single malt or even play a round or two of golf?
Well, we’ll have to wait and see. But if this establishing episode is anything to go by, it seems the show is once again back on form, and those worried about the scheduling against Downton Abbey needn’t worry.
On the strength of this opening episode, this looks as though it’ll be a fantastic final season.
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PETER FIRTH AND SPOOKS

Peter Firth on the final series of Spooks

The actor discusses the success of the spy drama series and what to expect from its final run

Written By

Gareth McLean

11:00 AM, 18 September 2011

As befits a man who has played a prescient spymaster for a decade, Peter Firth had sensed for some time that Spooks’ end was nigh. So when it was officially announced that the new series would be Spooks’ last, Firth says, pragmatically: “The swansong feeling has been there a couple of years and it’s better to go out on a high. Few shows run for ten years and if you learn from your mistakes and not make them the next year, but make some different ones and learn from them, then you build and build.”

And Spooks certainly built. From its launch in the spring after 9/11, when an interest in all things espionage made it the ultimate zeitgeist drama, it became one of the BBC’s most popular programmes, selling around the world and acting as a calling card for its producers Kudos (which was sold by its owners in 2007 for a reputed £35m).

As well as turning Matthew Macfadyen, Keeley Hawes and Rupert Penry Jones into household names, it attracted seasoned stars such as Jenny Agutter, Anna Chancellor, Hugh Laurie, Simon Russell Beale and, of course, Firth.

“I’ve avoided television series my whole career as I didn’t want to get stuck in something so-so, but I’m really proud of Spooks,” he says. “Every television show starts out with the best of intentions, but you never know what’s going to happen. By the end of the first series, which was only six episodes, it was clear we were onto something special.”

Aside from its judicious timing, what does Firth think that “special something” is?

“We’ve learnt that once you’ve got an audience on-side, they will forgive you a lot. We have holes in the plot sometimes that require a leap of faith and the audience make that because they know there will be a rewarding pay-off.”

Squeezed budgets also became an issue over the years. There are only six episodes in this final series “because of money” and stunts involving explosions, car crashes and helicopters have to be talked about rather than shown.

Still, the casting in Spooks “has always been brilliant” and it’s a drama that adheres to the winning principle of showing the exploits of a gang that we want to belong to. While he, and we, might divide Spooks into the Tom, Zoe and Danny years, and the Adam, Ros and Lucas era, Harry has remained constant throughout. And for all the high-octane drama, there has been a tender, unrequited love story at its heart – that of Harry and Ruth.

“The romance was never scripted,” admits Firth. “It was her and I flirting in takes, holding looks too long, lingering over lines. The writers picked up on that and it just grew from there. Nicola Walker, who plays Ruth, is a bit unpredictable – you never know what she’s going to do – but she’s an utter joy to play alongside.”

So will Harry and Ruth’s relationship be resolved? Firth, who is ridiculously sun-kissed from a holiday in Majorca, keeps shtum. Mostly. “This series is a six-act Greek tragedy with a profoundly tragic ending,” he says. “But there’s an optimistic note to tell you that the fight isn’t over.”

How typically cryptic.

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