I've got a secret stash of the Spooks series. It's in a CD tin, one of those 50 CD stacks and it takes up nearly the entire tin, being all ten series. It's all digitised as well so the secret tin has recently been in a drop to another location.
Naturally I was intrigued to see the movie version of the series, which even has a prefix in its title, implying a franchise. The use of the square brackets [ ] is well judged and true to the motif.
After the original 10 TV series, critics said the series had 'run out of ideas', but for me it was still pretty strong, with the exception of a few episodic bloopers towards the end. Most viewers will know that the series didn't leave any of its main players safe. Famously they brought forward the series finale demise of one of the popular characters. She barely lasted into the second reel of the first series.
Since seeing the movie, I've already had a quick spin through early series one again and there's a story, from 2002, about governmental policy towards immigration with a fringe politician stirring up the electorate. Hmmm.
The movie stays true to its London roots and still uses the familiar areas around the South Bank which aficionados have come to love. Okay, there's some Coventry ring road and Moscow as well, but it is a movie, after all.
I won't discuss plot or any of the set-pieces here, except to say it is still a fine extended episode.
My notes would include that they have made Spook Central a bit too much like something that Jack Bauer would inhabit. Harry Pearce used to have an office with pointless downlighters and glass crystal ornaments. That seems to have gone by the wayside in the new one. But then again, Harry gets to go out to play for part of the movie.
There's a few of the old gang who pop up too, and Kit Harington playing a new guy who is already bit disengaged and a loose cannon (naturally). He even has Hoxton mun* hair styling for part of it.
mun - not yet in Scrabble dictionary - Old English for Must or New English for Man-Bun.
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