Friday, January 19, 2007
Spooks
It was probably two years ago when I first watched my first episode of MI-5 (originally called "Spooks" across the pond). There was some hype in the media about it being a great spy-thriller kind of show which smacked of reality rather than the paranoid, frenetical, and quite often silly "24" on Fox. (MI-5, at the time, was said to be co-produced by A&E and BBC, what as far as I can ascertain was a gross inaccuracy or a blatant lie on A&E's part.)
It turned out that I got hopelessly hooked. There was a modicum of action, but a whole lot of intrigue and suspense. In a way, there was a quality to the show that I had last seen in "Wise Guy" in the 80s, and that meant that I found it very clever. The first point that caught my attention was the fact that it seemed to assume that the viewer was an intelligent human being. It explored the angle (so rarely portrayed in fictional works) that spooks are people and that they have to hide what they do even from their closest and most loved ones. This "spy's are human too" kind of thing showed that in dealing with their work, the spooks don't see only in black and white, as Jack Bauer does. They have their gripes, they second guess themselves, they suffer when the choices they have to make go against their moral make up. Then there was also the fact that the show didn't seem to be preaching any kind of agenda - early seasons of 24 cannot be blamed for following this model (see "The Evolution of Jack Bauer", Time, Jan. 14, 2007).
Refreshing. Exciting. Intelligent. Sensitive. In summary, a really great show. (Don't ask my wife, who loved the first two seasons of 24, if she thinks it is anything but gruesome, dark, and depressing.) The show changed a bit with every new series. Characters got killed (not all spooks are immortal like Jack Bauer), new characters joined, the cast dynamics changed, and the plot lines changed, as well. It continues to be great though. It just doesn't air on A&E anymore.
A&E quit it showing on series 4 (that is, season 4 for those who don't understand English). After showing the first two episodes, they ran all the remaining episodes back to back in an 8 hour marathon, a core dump of all the content for which they had paid money. They will probably never show it again; series 5 ended in England and series 6 comes back in August. Thanks to the magic of multi-region DVD players, I will continue to watch even if I have to buy the discs from Amazon.co.uk. And in the meantime, I'll continue to boycott A&E, who perhaps should drop the A from their name since their programming has become so mainstream and devoid of anything one might call art.
It turned out that I got hopelessly hooked. There was a modicum of action, but a whole lot of intrigue and suspense. In a way, there was a quality to the show that I had last seen in "Wise Guy" in the 80s, and that meant that I found it very clever. The first point that caught my attention was the fact that it seemed to assume that the viewer was an intelligent human being. It explored the angle (so rarely portrayed in fictional works) that spooks are people and that they have to hide what they do even from their closest and most loved ones. This "spy's are human too" kind of thing showed that in dealing with their work, the spooks don't see only in black and white, as Jack Bauer does. They have their gripes, they second guess themselves, they suffer when the choices they have to make go against their moral make up. Then there was also the fact that the show didn't seem to be preaching any kind of agenda - early seasons of 24 cannot be blamed for following this model (see "The Evolution of Jack Bauer", Time, Jan. 14, 2007).
Refreshing. Exciting. Intelligent. Sensitive. In summary, a really great show. (Don't ask my wife, who loved the first two seasons of 24, if she thinks it is anything but gruesome, dark, and depressing.) The show changed a bit with every new series. Characters got killed (not all spooks are immortal like Jack Bauer), new characters joined, the cast dynamics changed, and the plot lines changed, as well. It continues to be great though. It just doesn't air on A&E anymore.
A&E quit it showing on series 4 (that is, season 4 for those who don't understand English). After showing the first two episodes, they ran all the remaining episodes back to back in an 8 hour marathon, a core dump of all the content for which they had paid money. They will probably never show it again; series 5 ended in England and series 6 comes back in August. Thanks to the magic of multi-region DVD players, I will continue to watch even if I have to buy the discs from Amazon.co.uk. And in the meantime, I'll continue to boycott A&E, who perhaps should drop the A from their name since their programming has become so mainstream and devoid of anything one might call art.
# posted by Luiz Felipe Perrone : Friday, January 19, 2007
