TV & RADIO
ILONA AMOS
11th September 2005
THE Spooks storylines have been credited with having uncanny prescience when it comes to reflecting actual events, so much so that the explosive new two-parter that kicks off the fourth series of the Bafta-winning spy drama came close to being pulled because of a plot based around terrorist bombings in London. BBC executives feared that art may be imitating life just too closely, even although the script was actually written last year.
Spooks creators try hard to anticipate possible real-life scenarios when developing scripts, so it's a pitfall of the programme that it can be so prophetic and touch raw nerves. But it's also the show's realism that has made it so popular. The first explosive episode is being broadcast tomorrow, and we pick up the tale with the funeral of Danny, whose death at the hands of Islamic terrorists brought the last series to a shocking end.
The team are struggling to accept their colleague's violent killing, and have come to pay their last respects. But the sombre peace is shattered when a bomb blast is heard shuddering in the distance and the spooks must answer the call of duty. When the terrorist group Shining Dawn take responsibility for the attack, which has killed and maimed dozens of Londoners, it becomes obvious that the carnage has just begun - another bomb will be detonated every ten hours until an extremist prisoner is released. But time is running out.
Performances are as slick as ever, while scenes in the aftermath of the bomb blast look so realistic that they're frighteningly evocative of the dreadful news footage that has been haunting our screens all too often lately. We see the return of familiar faces Harry (Peter Firth), Adam (Rupert Penry-Jones), his MI6 agent wife Fiona (Olga Sosnovska), Ruth (Nicola Walker) and Zafar (Raza Jaffrey), while guest star Martine McCutcheon plays a waitress who happens to witness the bombers at work and ends up embroiled in the secret world of intelligence. Also showing up is straight-talking Juliet (Anna Chancellor), who looks set to wrestle with Harry for power.
Members of Shining Dawn - which, incidentally, is not an Islamic fundamentalist organisation - believe man should be culled for his destruction of the planet, pledging to maximise the death toll. Although the terrorists aren't cast as Muslims - "It's one of our priorities to make sure that no group is picked out as being more villainous than anyone else," says Firth - it's hard not to wonder if the 'death cult' of Shining Dawn isn't really an allegory for al-Qaeda and its cells - seemingly killing for killing's sake.
Work is already under way on a fifth series of Spooks, but going by the previous form of the writers, who never shy away from passing the death sentence on major players, let's hope we see the team return to duty unscathed.
• Spooks, tomorrow and Tuesday, BBC1, 9pm