Spooks:Code 9 BBC Drama or Vanguard for Police State Britain

Anyone tuning in to watch the new series of Spooks by the BBC was in for a shock, gone are the slick characters, racy tensions and faintly believable plots. In their place are a bunch of squabbling children, justifying an almost complete breakdown of civil liberties in a post(terrorist)-apocalyptic Britain.

To denigrate the BBC series Spooks with this bastard offspring is sheer sacrilege and an insult to the many previous fans. So, they are going for a younger audience with a new (perhaps to them) premise, but those of us that grew up in Cold War Britain were all to familiar with harrowing apocalyptic dramas that played on everyone’s fears and it’s not an era we wish to return to.

The BBC or Auntie as us media hacks call it, is a British institution and publicly funded, this comes with its own responsibilities. Its dramas are not purely entertainment they are meant to educate and inspire. The BBC’s latest offerings, see; Bonekickers, Spooks:Code 9 and Lab Rats are nothing more than cheap ratings grabbers. The plan in Spooks to blow up London so everyone has to more up t’ North was genius, think lower costs, think BBC, think rubbish.

If you did manage to suspend disbelief long enough and to actually see through cringe wincingly awful acting to finish the first episode, you were treated to a lead character being shot and a 19 yr old maths geek (think Numb3rs) taking her place as head of the Field Office (incidentally there was not a muddy boot in site despite every character doing field work). Quite how a 19 yr old is meant to have finished University and joined MI5 before most students can solve a quadratic is passed over. Of course Auntie hasn’t forgotten her leanings and there are the prerequisite obnoxious female characters that seem to have surpassed conversation, taking it to a higher form by simply shouting statement at each other and scowling a lot (think CSI mixed with Alan Sugar).

And quite how the BBC are going to get out of seemingly supporting Police State Britain and actually seeming quite fond of it throughout the series remains to be seen. I wonder if perhaps one of Tony Blair’s new positions is actually content editor of BBC One, it certainly seems possible.

What the BBC have managed to do is take a little of every successful TV show mixed it with a bit of Government propaganda, blend it together in the BBC Ideas masher and spew out meaningless pile of Channel 5 (think The Tribe) worthy drool. Franklin

P.S. Those of you watching the Olympics live of BBC’s iPlayer without a TV license expect a visit from the State Troopers, you’re breaking the law. On-demand service are not (yet) covered by the Jonathon Ross salary tax but live broadcasts are, be warned.