Still recovering after last weekend’s final episode of Spooks? Got a big Harry Pearce-shaped hole in your life? Don’t panic!
Today we launch our brand new Spooks blog, where we’ll be rewatching the first series at a manageable pace of two episodes each week, kicking off with the first two episodes.
If you don’t already have access to Series 1, the boxset is currently a bargain here…
> Buy the Series 1 boxset on Amazon.
Series 1 Episodes 1 & 2
Originally aired: Monday 13th May 2002 / Monday 20th May 2002
The ones where: …we meet the Grid’s original team, as Tom, Zoe and Danny face a mainland anti-abortion bombing campaign targeting doctors. With twenty devices on the loose, things could get serious. Can the agents avert disaster or will they wish they’d never been born?
In the second ep, the agents try to infiltrate a far right group trying to stir up race riots. With Zoe on a customs mission for Tessa, it’s time for Helen to show that she can do more than sit at a desk. When the heat is on and the chips are down, can she really cope?
Series 1 Episode 1
It’s always something of a shock to rewatch the early episodes of a programme as long-running as Spooks. It’s particularly strange to see Peter Firth looking far less jowly and careworn as Harry, with a sharp suit and an aggressive haircut, serving almost as merely a supporting character.
Meanwhile, Tom is the Section D chief trying to juggle life on the Grid and a relationship with the mother from the BT ads, leaving young agents Danny and Zoe to contend with money/landlord troubles respectively.
It all seems incredibly low-key and character-based compared to later series, with the 24-style split screen used mainly to show screwdrivers in action as the viewer is treated to the minutiae of spying. Even the threat from an extremist anti-abortion group is curiously minimalist because the threat to the odd doctor seems far less impressive than possible nuclear Armageddon. It is testament to the success that Spooks had in raising the stakes year on year that you find yourself thinking, ‘Why are they bothering with this?’.
However, as with every episode there are little plotlines being dangled for the sharp-eyed. Why does Tom detest Jenny Agutter’s Tessa so openly? Does he know that she shares a love of horses with their boss or is there some other reason?
All the classic Spooks elements are seeded in this first outing and it says a lot about the production’s slickness that it’s only when “September last year” is mentioned that you remember it’s a decade old.
Best line: “I have a camp bed!”
Best moment: Mary Kane discovers that Tom has double-crossed her as CIA agent Christine Dale throws a Florida holiday brochure in Kane’s lap, confirming that she will be executed upon her return.
Series 1 Episode 2
This was the episode that cemented Spooks’ place in TV history as it hit the viewer with one of the most disturbing and memorable scenes of the entire ten year run.
We are still ‘treated’ to Tom’s relationship problems (it’s hard to imagine the personal life of Dimitri ever receiving this quantity of screentime), along with Zoe’s bedsit from hell and Danny’s debts to fulfil the promise of the ‘MI5 not 9 to 5’ tagline.
For the majority of the programme, the plot meanders and the villain does everything but twirl a moustache in an effort to audition for that winter’s pantomime season, while we get to know Lisa Faulkner’s Helen. Then, the likeable agent makes a fatal slip-up and is taken to a warehouse in Romford to meet destiny in the shape of a deep fat fryer.
What is a surprise is how little of the actual event you see, but it is horrific and disturbing because of the pictures that the viewer adds for themselves, which is no doubt what many fans will remember from when it originally aired.
It cannot be overstated how quickly the rug was pulled from underneath our feet by this ‘regular’ character’s demise. Viewers were used to everyone escaping from situations like that by the skin of their teeth, but Spooks boldly subverted the whole genre at the time by saying that we couldn’t always rely on that.
Best line: “Take a chill pill, Harry.”
Best moment: The deep fat fryer scene, of course! A totally iconic, show-defining moment that is deeply shocking even now.
What did you think of the episodes? Let us know below…