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A highly skilled team of Chinese agents is in London for two days only, leaving the team at MI5 to suspect that they’ve got something big planned. Meanwhile, Lucas is left with no option but to get Vaughn what he wants in order to protect his rekindled relationship with old flame Maya.
While not quite as tense as last week’s episode, this was a solid episode of Spooks. There were some great individual elements here: Dimitri and Tariq were shown to be a good team in diffusing the bomb together, and the general twists and turns of the story worked marvellously, particularly the scenes after the revelation about said bomb. I'm still not convinced by Beth, so her crisis of self-belief surrounding the uncertainty of Kai’s loyalty didn’t affect me, but his character was believable enough to keep me engaged in that storyline. And there has to be a tense stand-off involving Harry and the Home Secretary every week, as their clashes have quickly become a real highlight of the programme.
Full credit has to go to the very versatile Benedict Wong (last seen as Prime, a member of the 8+ in The IT Crowd) for carrying the emotional weight in this episode, as the double/triple/not-really-sure agent who bore the guilt of his brother’s death heavily.
The Lucas storyline is really starting to annoy me. If I’m repeating myself every week, it’s because there’s nothing new to say. Sure, this time we had Lucas basically destroying someone else’s life, and the massive revelation that the Albany file contained a painting of a ship, but we’re still no closer to knowing his secret than we were the first time Vaughn called him “John”. And, if I’ve got the timelines right, there was a gap of at least few years between Lucas leaving Maya and going into prison in Russia (a gap in which he got married), so I’m finding it hard to believe that she matters that much to him. Laila Rouass has good chemistry with Richard Armitage, but the idea that she’d forgive him so quickly after fifteen years just doesn’t ring true. Hopefully the final revelation that the Chinese agents were there to get information on Lucas will finally move this along.
But the real hero of this episode was Ruth, who finally got to show that she can be just as impressive in the field as on the grid. It was deftly written, as her extensive knowledge about everything (including the symptoms of hypoglycaemia) was the thing that saved her. Bar a slightly terse exchange about her lip, there wasn’t much interaction between her and Harry this week, although his obvious pleasure in her all-round brilliance was lovely to see.
This wasn’t a classic episode of Spooks, and the Lucas plot is really starting to drag, but it was still entertaining and engaging, and the final twist worked beautifully.
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