Jasmine Sahu is well suited with this new American drama exclusive to Dave.
Lois Cameron explains why this series is much more than your average cosy period drama.
The last episode of this series sees Sherlock and Moriarty attempt to solve the final problem with devastating consequences.
With major cast changes afoot, Jacob Martin ponders whether Being Human can live up to its own scarily high standard.
“I wonder if you can even remember the truth of what you were. You’re a killer, John, who fell asleep and dreamed he was a hero. Now it’s time to wake up and remember the truth. The dream is over now, and the killer is awake.”
Harry’s angry with Ruth for investigating Lucas behind his back, but he can see that her instincts could be right. Meanwhile, a council worker’s amateur spying forces Ruth to admit to some uncomfortable truths about the life she lost in Greece. Harry’s received some new information on a bombing in Dakar fifteen years previously, and he takes Lucas, who was there at the time, with him to meet their source – Vaughn. Lucas clearly isn’t telling the whole story, but the truth is more awful than Harry could ever have imagined.
After I was fairly bored by the Lucas storyline in the early parts of the series, and was completely unconvinced by his subplot in last week’s patchy effort, I have to admit that the build up paid off beautifully in this penultimate episode. The revelations about just how bad Lucas was were truly shocking, and resulted in some magnificent scenes that allowed some brilliant actors to do some seriously brilliant work.
Harry’s despair that Lucas’s increasingly odd behaviour wasn’t going to have an easy explanation was beautifully done, particularly as it became apparent that he needed Lucas to be innocent. Apart from Ruth, he’s the person Harry trusts most on the Grid, so the idea that he’d been hiding something so monumental all along clearly crushed Harry, and Peter Firth nailed it in his big scene with Lucas. It was some of the best writing Spooks has pulled out of the bag in a long time, particularly his disgust at Lucas’s protests at how much he’s suffered because of his actions: “Conscience is a bloody luxury, it means you’re alive!”
And all my frustration at Iain Glen being completely wasted in the role of Vaughn earlier in the series was put to rest here. His complete annihilation of the persona that John created in Lucas North was brilliant, particularly his dying speech. Even though I still wish we'd been shown why Maya means so much to Lucas, I guess if you’re going to tell me that she does, doing it by having Lucas stick a knife into someone’s leg is a fairly effective way.
The Ruth storyline seemed a bit out of odds with the rest of the plot, until we got to her final scene in the hospital with Harry. If anything, I’d have liked to have seen this as the main plot at some stage, but if my chief problem with an episode is that the B-plot is too good, things are going pretty well. I was all ready to be angry that Ruth was suddenly about to have a breakdown over something she’s barely mentioned in two series, but the twist that what scared her most was that she wasn’t still grieving, that she was actually fine, was brilliant and Nicola Walker acted everyone else off the screen.
This was a brilliant penultimate episode of Spooks, full of twists and revelations aplenty, but with enough left over to build serious anticipation for the final episode. Lucas is clearly bad, but just how bad, exactly?
You must log in to submit a comment.
