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At the behest of the Americans, MI5 is undergoing a technology upgrade to enhance their security. When preparing for the new technology, Tariq discovers that the grid has been bugged: everything they say, do and write can be seen by an unknown attacker, who could compromise the new system and publish top secret data. Meanwhile, Lucas goes further than we could ever expect to try and save his relationship with Maya as Vaughn’s intentions become increasingly clear.
Last week’s episode was an absolute corker, and the basic idea of this week’s is great - the scenes with the operatives at the Grid trying to outsmart their watchers are brilliant. What lets it down are a few stinking plot holes (once they’d managed to escape, how did they know where to find the cyber attackers?) and the rather unbelievable and tedious Lucas subplot.
What this episode does right, it does very right indeed. I’m glad to see any episode that foregrounds Dimitri, who I’ve already come to be like very much thanks to a few choice lines and Max Brown’s easy charm. Every time I’ve started to think that I’d like to see Tariq getting more involved in missions, I’ve been stopped by the horrific memory of lovely, geeky Colin’s body hanging from a tree. But this week, my faith in the nerd was proved to be valid: his expertise found the attackers, and it was only lack of experience that led him to give the game away.
And, of course, my heart leapt for joy at the return of dear old Malcolm. I’ve grown to be quite fond of Tariq, but I’ll never love him in the way I loved Malcolm. I was trusting that he’d see through Lucas’s pretty terrible lies, especially when Lucas returns, apparently ready to shoot Malcolm if necessary, and I wasn’t disappointed: Hugh Simon completely nailed his growing doubt, and I hope beyond all hope that this heralds a more permanent return for one of the great Spooks characters.
What didn’t work at all for me was Lucas’s plot. Even though it did give me the return of Malcolm, when we got to Lucas going off during a very important mission to sort out his personal life, the plot just lost me. I found the American hacker character completely unrealistic, and it’ll take more than some flashes of Armitage’s beautiful baby blues to make me forget some of the awful things he did here. Ultimately, I just don’t buy that Maya means that much to him.
As for Harry and Ruth, the scenes in the trailer were a complete misdirection that I’d applaud if I hadn’t so stupidly fallen for it. Hopefully their hinted at clash over Lucas will bring eventually bring them together rather than drive them further apart, as I don’t think my poor heart can cope.
I just wish that this episode had been solely about the operatives at the Grid trying to find out who’s hacked into their system: I’d have happily watched an hour of that, rather than be dragged off into Lucas’s murky world again.
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