Inclined to return to the reality of the present day I have decided to stick with spies past and present commencing with the first three episodes of the tenth and last series of Spooks. The series has impressed with the topicality of the storylines post 9/11 and that and that members of the team die. There is no romance and the work is bedevilled by rivalries, political compromises and double dealings. Only two of the original members of the Team have survived.
Sir Harry Pierce KBE (Peter Firth) is no Smiley but he is reflecting thinker, who also likes to sit back and weight up all the possibilities before following the more obvious trails. He also has a vast body of experience to draw on. His role within the intelligence service is counter terrorism and his team act outside the law if required.
The other continuing member of the team is Ruth Evershed (Nicola Walker) who was officially believed to have died at the end in the 2006, but Harry arranged for her disappear to a Greek Island where she had established a relationship with a step child. Prior to his Harry and Ruth and become close but knew their relationship could never become official because of their roles and the past. She reluctantly returns after her partner is killed and the child is brought up by others members of his extended family. There is a strong bond between Ruth and Harry and vice versa, some may call it love. They will protect and if necessary cover up for each other. Ruth has the same role as Connie in Le Carré world, the super analyst who makes sense of vast quantities of information and sees what needs to be understood.
In the previous series Harry has forced the Adminstration to do a trade to rescue captured Ruth and Lucas North who has cracked become a traitor commits suicide so Harry is placed on gardening leave with a new acting head of service while his conduct is official investigated by a Tribunal. The Coalition Home Secretary has continuing doubts about Harry after his years of service to the previous order and offers a Harry way back with the Tribunal decision kicked into the long grass.
A retired former Spook Max Witt (Giles Havergal) has been killed at his home although the death is first made to look natural. It has emerged that Witt was killed because he knew somebody is posing as Harry using his old coded messages from the Cold War to gain the confidence of a former agent and gain current information about Russian activities.
This leads to learning that a Russian businessman, Government Minister and former KGB hard line officer akin to Le Carré’s Karla (Ilya Gavrik (Jonathan Hyde) is in London within his wife and son on a secret mission for the establishment of a new special intelligence anti terrorism relationships with the UK and in secret from the USA who appears to want to keep control but distance themselves from issues in Europe. Harry has his doubts about opening up British intelligence information to the Russians( again similar to the situation that arose at the Circus Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) and this is shared by his USA link officer in London Alton Beecher (Colin Salmond) who appears to know that something is afoot and warns Harry against such a development.
Harry has another reason for concern which he tells Ruth who is to accompany him as his partner at a reception in the London to begin the forging of the new relationship. Two decades ago Harry converted the man’s wife, Elena (Alice Krige) and the two had an affair and the couple‘s only child is Harry‘s. He arranges a secret meeting at the reception to arrange another meeting so he can warn her that he has not made previous contact and she has been sending information to an unknown third party. Their son Sasha Gavrik (Tom Weston-Jones) is a serving officer in the current Russian security service and is part of the delegation with responsibility to protect his parents on their secret mission to London. The son is waiting for Harry at his home threatens to kill him because he knows Harry was responsible for his mother being a traitor and the young man refuses to listen when Harry tries to reassure him that he had not resurrected the relationship in any form.
An attempt to assassinate the Russian emissary, ostensibly by a Chechen rebel is foiled and the man is killed by the new Director of Operations of the team and is her first kill. She resists the invitation to go out for a drink to with male colleague who says he knows them both lead lonely lives without friends because of the nature of their work, a theme constantly explored in the previous series. In fact she returns to a normal home life where her mother looks after her daughter while she away at work.
In the second episode a member of the team is mugged on his way to a meeting and his laptop containing the identities of five high level assets is stolen, one of which is Martha Ford (Lydia Leonard), an attractive woman who works for one of Gavrik's companies in London
Those behind the taking of the laptop appear to know what they were doing and threaten to release the identity of the uncover officers unless their conditions are met, The Team’s skilled technocrat attempts to trace the origin of the messages and eventually this tracked down to a former disenchanted spy but he has been working for someone else to organised the snatch of the information. The first undercover agent is revealed in the media and he commits suicide.
While the decision is taken to remove from the danger Martha and take her to a safe house and offered protection she is asked to undertake one more mission and gain a copy of the hard drive of the Russian’s office computer. She is reassured she will be safe and is nearly caught but is able to leave the building having seen her face on the news on a TV monitor. It is evident to the Team that this is an attempt to undermine the proposed new relationship with Russian intelligence and where no doubt there are those in Moscow who are also unhappy about the new policy.
The Russian emissary demands that the girl is cut adrift as the price for enabling the new relationship to develop. This is a very hard thing for the head of Operations to implement as she has made promises about protecting the young woman who is now terrified about being paid off without the ongoing assistance and protection of the state. Harry is confident that his senior assistant can cope and one day becomes his successor.
Meanwhile Sasha tells his mother he is aware she has been a traitor and wants to know why she did it before he agrees to protect her. She explains that her parents disappeared and were killed by old regime because they were kind and wanted help others. One of Sasha’s closest friends and also a member of service begin to track down that there is a traitor within the mission and this forces Sasha to kill him and call on Harry to help in the cover up.
Meanwhile they try to find out who is behind the attempt to derail negotiations on the new relationship. While working at home their computer expert Tariq Masood (Shazad Latif) discovers vital information from studying close circuit footage of the area where the laptop was snatched. On his way to the HQ someone bumps into him and this results in his death from a secret injection. He dies on the steps of the building where he is found about another colleague. Harry meets Elena to warn her someone has been posing as him and he also asks Ruth to check up of the London CIA man Jim Cover (William Hope), believing the is the impostor.
As has been a regular feature of previous series the main story is interspersed with other others and in the third episode the belief that someone Johnny Grier (Mel Raido) is attempting to detonate a dirty bomb in London (as if there is such a thing as a clean bomb). Trace amounts of radioactive material has been found at Heathrow Airport and closed circuit camera film reveals that a well known anarchist and international protestor has re -entered the county and that he has a sister who uses an on line site for relationships. Another new member of the team Dimitri Levendis (Max Brown) is asked to operate a honey trap against his better judgement the sister, Natalie (Georgina Rich), via Internet dating.
She knows nothing which makes Dimitri even guiltier especially she wants more than one night stand. The brother arrives on the scene and is suspicious of Johnny but eventually takes to him which complicates his wanting to get out of the relationship with the sister. It appears that the target of the bomber and his many associates in London is a London based investment company which made millions out of the nuclear disaster in Japan.
The target is taken into custody and because of pressure Johnny reveals that he thought he was binging heroin in to the UK and no idea a bomb was involved with the intention of killing and maiming. He gives information which leads capture of those in a vehicle reaching the destination building; however it is empty with no trace of the nuclear material. The team realises that Greer was lying and that this was a ploy to enable him to launch a personal attack on the Chief Executive Officer of the company. He breaks the phial over himself so only he is affected, hastening his end after the CEO escapes. He persuades Dimitri to end the relationship with his sister without revealing she was being used.
Throughout the episode there are links with series story as Ruth goes to meet the wife of the Russian accompanied by the son to reveal that the CIA appear to be behind the sending of messages as if it was Harry underlining their intent to undermine the proposed new relationship between Russian and the UK. The team then find out the reason for the murder of Tarik, he had identified that the individual who stole the laptop works indirectly for the CIA and that she was also present at the party where the assassination attempt was to have been made. This suggests that the CIA killed Tarik
Meanwhile there has been another development which suggests the there is more afoot. The Home Secretary asks that Ruth keeps him informed as she high hopes for her in the future. Ruth goes along with this, we presume to gain knowledge for passing on to Harry. He follows up the first overture by taking her out to dinner.
The weather changed to day with the cold sharp wind dominating. After an eighteen hour day it was 9.30 am before I woke after a good sleep but with interruptions and dreams. I did not exercise to balance the food intake of mushrooms with a tomato for breakfast. But no cereal and then just a one course Tex Mex oven cook lunch with a sardine salad in the evening plus the second helping of stewed plums and custard with decaffeinated coffee before bedtime. The mood rather like the shipping forecast was a lowering one with limited visibility.
I did watch the Werner Hezog film Invincible based on the life of the polish Circus strong man performer to came to the USA, obtained citizenship and died comparatively young after a nail he hammered with his fist into a block of wood went through and pierced his knee, became infected and he died of blood poisoning despite several operations to try and save him including the amputation of both his legs. His feats of strength were extraordinary and made him into a legend and he was the first to sell commercially a body building programme.
Werner has take the basic facts and created a conflict between the strength of body and the strength of mind in the couple of years before Hitler seized power in Germany. The film opens in an East Poland rural small town where Zishe Breibart works as a Blacksmith with his father and adored by his young brother. The family are orthodox Jews with traditional and conventional values of the day. In the opening sequence because he has earned a few coppers he takes his young brother for a meal into the nearby restaurant and bar whereas a group of young men insult their Jewishness to an extent that eventual Zishe loses his temper and in the eschewing fight breaks a table and a full beer barrel. He wants to pay for the damage but has no more money so the owner suggests he enters a contest to defeat the alleged world’s strongest man. There is a substantial cash prize offered which he wins without difficulty.
The next part of the film is creative fiction. Herzog has changed the dates of the life of Zishe so that it is only just before Hitler taking power in Germany that a theatrical agent visits the family and offers Zishe a new life as a strongman act in Berlin. After waiting for the Passover and consulting local Rabbi, Zishe decides to take up the offer but instead of using the first class ticket he cashes this in to provide new clothes for his family and walks the distance carrying his battered suitcase.
He is placed to work in a night club style theatre club with a stage, scantily clad female dancers, magician and other acts where the star is an occultist fortune teller played by Tim Roth. He also has an inner sanctum where he sits within a round table telling the fortunes of those who have paid to participate in the special sessions, In addition he does a stage mind reading act of the type where an individual writes down a special event such as a murder which gained a lot of publicity and gives coded clues which enable Roth to reveal the main facts to great acclaim.
Zishe is dressed up as an Aryan with fake blonde hair and his acts of strength are such he becomes a favourite with the audience which then comprises mainly supporters of Hitler. He develops a friendship with the pianist who is a stateless classical artist who has become the plaything of the Roth who is also prone to violence. Life has become good for Zishe and then the situation begins to change for everyone. His younger brother arrives, a strange boy, who is wise beyond his years and who convinces Zishe to be proud of Jewish heritage with the consequence that he takes off his Aryan wig and announces is the new Jewish Samson. This horrifies the Nazi followers who feel betrayed but the wealthy Jews of Berlin flock to give him support causing great tension between the two groups.
This also causes problems for Hanussen who attempts to discredit Zishe by alleging it his power which controls Samson and creates a stunt in which he appears to control Marta, the pianist to also perform acts of great strength. He also attempts to ingratiate himself with Himmler and Goebbels, and supports the rise of Hitler getting himself a post as Minister of the Occult. However a confrontation occurs during a party of top level Nazi’s on a boating trip between Zishe and Hanussen over his treatment of Marta and this leads to a challenge over the authenticity of the power of the Occultist which one of the Nazis suggests can only be settled in court.
At the trial the man is not only exposed as a con artist who has pretended to by a variety of well known people in the past but is really Jewish with the name Herschel Steinschneider. He is taken away by the Nazis and murdered. Zishe returns to Poland convinced that he is seeing real visions of the future which include an unknown but terrifying threat to all Jewish people and he attempts to create an army to protect Jews from what is to come, although only few listen. It is during one attempt to influence that he is challenged to show his physical strength and the accident with the nail occurs. In hospital and in delirium he has a vision of his younger brother flying to safety from rocks covered with the red crabs that have to cross over land to where they lay their eggs. They have to cross over a railway line oblivious to the advancing train which will squash to death all those in its path.
Sir Harry Pierce KBE (Peter Firth) is no Smiley but he is reflecting thinker, who also likes to sit back and weight up all the possibilities before following the more obvious trails. He also has a vast body of experience to draw on. His role within the intelligence service is counter terrorism and his team act outside the law if required.
The other continuing member of the team is Ruth Evershed (Nicola Walker) who was officially believed to have died at the end in the 2006, but Harry arranged for her disappear to a Greek Island where she had established a relationship with a step child. Prior to his Harry and Ruth and become close but knew their relationship could never become official because of their roles and the past. She reluctantly returns after her partner is killed and the child is brought up by others members of his extended family. There is a strong bond between Ruth and Harry and vice versa, some may call it love. They will protect and if necessary cover up for each other. Ruth has the same role as Connie in Le Carré world, the super analyst who makes sense of vast quantities of information and sees what needs to be understood.
In the previous series Harry has forced the Adminstration to do a trade to rescue captured Ruth and Lucas North who has cracked become a traitor commits suicide so Harry is placed on gardening leave with a new acting head of service while his conduct is official investigated by a Tribunal. The Coalition Home Secretary has continuing doubts about Harry after his years of service to the previous order and offers a Harry way back with the Tribunal decision kicked into the long grass.
A retired former Spook Max Witt (Giles Havergal) has been killed at his home although the death is first made to look natural. It has emerged that Witt was killed because he knew somebody is posing as Harry using his old coded messages from the Cold War to gain the confidence of a former agent and gain current information about Russian activities.
This leads to learning that a Russian businessman, Government Minister and former KGB hard line officer akin to Le Carré’s Karla (Ilya Gavrik (Jonathan Hyde) is in London within his wife and son on a secret mission for the establishment of a new special intelligence anti terrorism relationships with the UK and in secret from the USA who appears to want to keep control but distance themselves from issues in Europe. Harry has his doubts about opening up British intelligence information to the Russians( again similar to the situation that arose at the Circus Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) and this is shared by his USA link officer in London Alton Beecher (Colin Salmond) who appears to know that something is afoot and warns Harry against such a development.
Harry has another reason for concern which he tells Ruth who is to accompany him as his partner at a reception in the London to begin the forging of the new relationship. Two decades ago Harry converted the man’s wife, Elena (Alice Krige) and the two had an affair and the couple‘s only child is Harry‘s. He arranges a secret meeting at the reception to arrange another meeting so he can warn her that he has not made previous contact and she has been sending information to an unknown third party. Their son Sasha Gavrik (Tom Weston-Jones) is a serving officer in the current Russian security service and is part of the delegation with responsibility to protect his parents on their secret mission to London. The son is waiting for Harry at his home threatens to kill him because he knows Harry was responsible for his mother being a traitor and the young man refuses to listen when Harry tries to reassure him that he had not resurrected the relationship in any form.
An attempt to assassinate the Russian emissary, ostensibly by a Chechen rebel is foiled and the man is killed by the new Director of Operations of the team and is her first kill. She resists the invitation to go out for a drink to with male colleague who says he knows them both lead lonely lives without friends because of the nature of their work, a theme constantly explored in the previous series. In fact she returns to a normal home life where her mother looks after her daughter while she away at work.
In the second episode a member of the team is mugged on his way to a meeting and his laptop containing the identities of five high level assets is stolen, one of which is Martha Ford (Lydia Leonard), an attractive woman who works for one of Gavrik's companies in London
Those behind the taking of the laptop appear to know what they were doing and threaten to release the identity of the uncover officers unless their conditions are met, The Team’s skilled technocrat attempts to trace the origin of the messages and eventually this tracked down to a former disenchanted spy but he has been working for someone else to organised the snatch of the information. The first undercover agent is revealed in the media and he commits suicide.
While the decision is taken to remove from the danger Martha and take her to a safe house and offered protection she is asked to undertake one more mission and gain a copy of the hard drive of the Russian’s office computer. She is reassured she will be safe and is nearly caught but is able to leave the building having seen her face on the news on a TV monitor. It is evident to the Team that this is an attempt to undermine the proposed new relationship with Russian intelligence and where no doubt there are those in Moscow who are also unhappy about the new policy.
The Russian emissary demands that the girl is cut adrift as the price for enabling the new relationship to develop. This is a very hard thing for the head of Operations to implement as she has made promises about protecting the young woman who is now terrified about being paid off without the ongoing assistance and protection of the state. Harry is confident that his senior assistant can cope and one day becomes his successor.
Meanwhile Sasha tells his mother he is aware she has been a traitor and wants to know why she did it before he agrees to protect her. She explains that her parents disappeared and were killed by old regime because they were kind and wanted help others. One of Sasha’s closest friends and also a member of service begin to track down that there is a traitor within the mission and this forces Sasha to kill him and call on Harry to help in the cover up.
Meanwhile they try to find out who is behind the attempt to derail negotiations on the new relationship. While working at home their computer expert Tariq Masood (Shazad Latif) discovers vital information from studying close circuit footage of the area where the laptop was snatched. On his way to the HQ someone bumps into him and this results in his death from a secret injection. He dies on the steps of the building where he is found about another colleague. Harry meets Elena to warn her someone has been posing as him and he also asks Ruth to check up of the London CIA man Jim Cover (William Hope), believing the is the impostor.
As has been a regular feature of previous series the main story is interspersed with other others and in the third episode the belief that someone Johnny Grier (Mel Raido) is attempting to detonate a dirty bomb in London (as if there is such a thing as a clean bomb). Trace amounts of radioactive material has been found at Heathrow Airport and closed circuit camera film reveals that a well known anarchist and international protestor has re -entered the county and that he has a sister who uses an on line site for relationships. Another new member of the team Dimitri Levendis (Max Brown) is asked to operate a honey trap against his better judgement the sister, Natalie (Georgina Rich), via Internet dating.
She knows nothing which makes Dimitri even guiltier especially she wants more than one night stand. The brother arrives on the scene and is suspicious of Johnny but eventually takes to him which complicates his wanting to get out of the relationship with the sister. It appears that the target of the bomber and his many associates in London is a London based investment company which made millions out of the nuclear disaster in Japan.
The target is taken into custody and because of pressure Johnny reveals that he thought he was binging heroin in to the UK and no idea a bomb was involved with the intention of killing and maiming. He gives information which leads capture of those in a vehicle reaching the destination building; however it is empty with no trace of the nuclear material. The team realises that Greer was lying and that this was a ploy to enable him to launch a personal attack on the Chief Executive Officer of the company. He breaks the phial over himself so only he is affected, hastening his end after the CEO escapes. He persuades Dimitri to end the relationship with his sister without revealing she was being used.
Throughout the episode there are links with series story as Ruth goes to meet the wife of the Russian accompanied by the son to reveal that the CIA appear to be behind the sending of messages as if it was Harry underlining their intent to undermine the proposed new relationship between Russian and the UK. The team then find out the reason for the murder of Tarik, he had identified that the individual who stole the laptop works indirectly for the CIA and that she was also present at the party where the assassination attempt was to have been made. This suggests that the CIA killed Tarik
Meanwhile there has been another development which suggests the there is more afoot. The Home Secretary asks that Ruth keeps him informed as she high hopes for her in the future. Ruth goes along with this, we presume to gain knowledge for passing on to Harry. He follows up the first overture by taking her out to dinner.
The weather changed to day with the cold sharp wind dominating. After an eighteen hour day it was 9.30 am before I woke after a good sleep but with interruptions and dreams. I did not exercise to balance the food intake of mushrooms with a tomato for breakfast. But no cereal and then just a one course Tex Mex oven cook lunch with a sardine salad in the evening plus the second helping of stewed plums and custard with decaffeinated coffee before bedtime. The mood rather like the shipping forecast was a lowering one with limited visibility.
I did watch the Werner Hezog film Invincible based on the life of the polish Circus strong man performer to came to the USA, obtained citizenship and died comparatively young after a nail he hammered with his fist into a block of wood went through and pierced his knee, became infected and he died of blood poisoning despite several operations to try and save him including the amputation of both his legs. His feats of strength were extraordinary and made him into a legend and he was the first to sell commercially a body building programme.
Werner has take the basic facts and created a conflict between the strength of body and the strength of mind in the couple of years before Hitler seized power in Germany. The film opens in an East Poland rural small town where Zishe Breibart works as a Blacksmith with his father and adored by his young brother. The family are orthodox Jews with traditional and conventional values of the day. In the opening sequence because he has earned a few coppers he takes his young brother for a meal into the nearby restaurant and bar whereas a group of young men insult their Jewishness to an extent that eventual Zishe loses his temper and in the eschewing fight breaks a table and a full beer barrel. He wants to pay for the damage but has no more money so the owner suggests he enters a contest to defeat the alleged world’s strongest man. There is a substantial cash prize offered which he wins without difficulty.
The next part of the film is creative fiction. Herzog has changed the dates of the life of Zishe so that it is only just before Hitler taking power in Germany that a theatrical agent visits the family and offers Zishe a new life as a strongman act in Berlin. After waiting for the Passover and consulting local Rabbi, Zishe decides to take up the offer but instead of using the first class ticket he cashes this in to provide new clothes for his family and walks the distance carrying his battered suitcase.
He is placed to work in a night club style theatre club with a stage, scantily clad female dancers, magician and other acts where the star is an occultist fortune teller played by Tim Roth. He also has an inner sanctum where he sits within a round table telling the fortunes of those who have paid to participate in the special sessions, In addition he does a stage mind reading act of the type where an individual writes down a special event such as a murder which gained a lot of publicity and gives coded clues which enable Roth to reveal the main facts to great acclaim.
Zishe is dressed up as an Aryan with fake blonde hair and his acts of strength are such he becomes a favourite with the audience which then comprises mainly supporters of Hitler. He develops a friendship with the pianist who is a stateless classical artist who has become the plaything of the Roth who is also prone to violence. Life has become good for Zishe and then the situation begins to change for everyone. His younger brother arrives, a strange boy, who is wise beyond his years and who convinces Zishe to be proud of Jewish heritage with the consequence that he takes off his Aryan wig and announces is the new Jewish Samson. This horrifies the Nazi followers who feel betrayed but the wealthy Jews of Berlin flock to give him support causing great tension between the two groups.
This also causes problems for Hanussen who attempts to discredit Zishe by alleging it his power which controls Samson and creates a stunt in which he appears to control Marta, the pianist to also perform acts of great strength. He also attempts to ingratiate himself with Himmler and Goebbels, and supports the rise of Hitler getting himself a post as Minister of the Occult. However a confrontation occurs during a party of top level Nazi’s on a boating trip between Zishe and Hanussen over his treatment of Marta and this leads to a challenge over the authenticity of the power of the Occultist which one of the Nazis suggests can only be settled in court.
At the trial the man is not only exposed as a con artist who has pretended to by a variety of well known people in the past but is really Jewish with the name Herschel Steinschneider. He is taken away by the Nazis and murdered. Zishe returns to Poland convinced that he is seeing real visions of the future which include an unknown but terrifying threat to all Jewish people and he attempts to create an army to protect Jews from what is to come, although only few listen. It is during one attempt to influence that he is challenged to show his physical strength and the accident with the nail occurs. In hospital and in delirium he has a vision of his younger brother flying to safety from rocks covered with the red crabs that have to cross over land to where they lay their eggs. They have to cross over a railway line oblivious to the advancing train which will squash to death all those in its path.
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