[SPK] Clean Skin

TV Programme: Spooks
Season: 2
Episode: 7
Date I watched this episode: 10/10/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 26 days.

Most Spooks episodes spend a lot of time focussing on elegant conspiracies and the individuals behind them. This took a bit of a break from that tradition by giving hardly any screentime to the actual antagonists and instead focussing mainly on a group of low-life criminals. It was an interesting and brave departure for the series, which paid off to some extent but also had its drawbacks.

I think the community of criminals, led by Denton Franks, was very believable. The relationships between the characters are subtly emotional but outwardly macho. The main character of Denton is not "censored" in any way: his reaction to JJ's return in his own final appearance is not dumbed down. It's very believable that he would react that way and it's very commendable of the writers to show that. JJ himself was believable as a 14-year old boy, and as with the earlier episode "Spiders", the ending was left open.

This also served as a strong character development episode. Sam, Ruth and to a lesser extent Danny, took a very back seat in this episode. Harry, Tom and Zoe were the major characters developed here.

Harry had the entire teaser (part before the credits) of the episode devoted to him. His reaction to the personal attack on him, and how he dealt with that both emotionally and professionally, was very interesting to see throughout the episode. One of the coolest parts of the episode was when he came into Denton's house with Tom and demanded the case, phone and JJ to be handed over to them. His completely cool tone when he said "you can't imagine what would happen if you pulled that trigger" was awesome, but in that moment it almost seemed like he wasn't believable. Denton didn't know they were from MI-5. A middle-aged man with ginger hair speaking in a quiet tone; it's not what he is used to. But then, maybe that's why he gave them what they wanted.

Tom and Christine's relationship is now "official" and his third of the programme so far. As with Ellie and Vicki, it's explored how Tom and Christine react to the strain placed on their relationship by Tom's job. Better than most, I think. And Tom showed that he wasn't afraid to use intelligence gleaned from his "pillow talk" to assist a live operation.

Zoe on the other hand is becoming more and more torn about this job. Ever since the breakdown of her relationship with Carlo, and possibly at the start of it, she has been becoming more and more unstable. I'm surprised she's still around: all she does is complains and doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of them any more. One of these days, she is going to reach breaking point.

In general I thought it was good to see how the section reacted to the French as a kind of "opponent" in all this. They were a worthy opponent too - not your typical stumbling foreign intelligence agency, but one with a strategy to rival our own. In the end, they had mixed loyalties - which were flexible to their own needs. This isn't too far away from our beloved protagonists.

Despite all this, I didn't think this episode was great. It was quite good, but not great. I think the episode was quite slow-paced and had quite a linear storyline. In fact, I haven't even mentioned the storyline above. Also, it was quite light on sets, which makes a big difference I think, especially in this show which is trying to be as "real-world" as possible. But it certainly had a lot of good ideas in it, so I can't fault it entirely.