Spooks recommissioned
Thursday, December 4, 2008 by Graham Kibble-White
The BBC has announced Spooks will return for an eighth series next year.
Hermione Norris, Peter Firth and Richard Armitage
Having enjoyed perhaps its most critically acclaimed season ever (and with next week’s finale still to come), the show has regularly been attracting over 5.7 millions viewers to BBC1 and BBC3.
Ben Stephenson, Controller, BBC Drama Commissioning says: “I’m delighted Spooks is returning to BBC1 and BBC3 next year. It continues to be a channel defining show, consistently pushing the boundaries of television drama while maintaining strong viewer loyalty and attracting critical acclaim.”
Kudos will begin filming series eight in March 2009. While most of the cast expect to return, Miranda Raison (Jo Portman) has already stated she’ll only be in “some” of next year’s episodes.
I wonder what the viewing figures have been in Scotland – where Spooks has been shunted around the schedules as if it was an ITV import of the 60s and 70s destined to be shown at differing times in differing regions.
It’s not just Spooks that’s suffered this fate though – STV recently refused to broadcast the new Sharpe (And have no plans to do so) and some of the new Poirots – apparently to promote their commitment to regional broadcasting. In the former case this was achieved by broadcasting a 4 year old straight to DVD drama which had been made by STV and apparently was not good enough to broadcast at any time during the interim (promoted as a exciting new drama by the channel – well, new to people that managed to avoid the news that it was 4 years old); and Poirot was replaced by a clip show about Taggart and a documentary about the London nail bomber – the latter being particularly pertinent regional broadcasting in Scotland… That BBC Scotland has followed suit with its treatment of Spooks, leaving its loyal audience uncertain of where to find it (other than the iPlayer) is a tad worrying for British broadcasting.
Best wishes
Scott
I get the feeling that if the whole country was watching the show at the same time (with no advance look-sees on BBC3), it’d be doing even better in the ratings.
I’ve no idea how it affected the figures, but on top of BBC Scotland’s treatment of the show, BBC Northern Ireland also shunted some of this series of Spooks to a later slot, to make way for some regional talking shop with Stephen Nolan.
Anyway, this series has been excellent: two cracking deaths (one expected, one not), Hermione Norris has been ace (less talking through her nose, for one thing which always bugged me before) and Peter Firth is always brilliant. It’d be a bit odd for Miranda Raison to cut down on her appearances voluntarily, given that she’s done hardly anything this series.
The one great thing which Spooks always gets right is, if you’re going to be ludicrous, you always have to play it straight.
I really like spooks, but i’ve missed plenty of episodes (last 2 series) cos of the schedule. This season has been more ‘together’ than I’ve seen it for a while.
Hermione Norris hasn’t done that ‘chewing a wasp’ look half as much and they’ve stopped trying to make her out out at the obvious love interest which is good, when she’s more female Bond .
Only fear is they’ll off Malcolm at some point , who is great.- but he needs a nerdy partner – Clive was equally good and their partnership made the early series .
Actually generally I think they are lacking a bit of cast – we need a few more bods in the show – make it look like a big operation – we have 6 main characters now that Connie is revealed ( last episode was probably the best I’ve seen) , and I can’t really understand why they haven’t got something like a spy of the week sort of thing properly going on . MI5 Agent who’s responsible for a certain area contacting them and plot revolves round them .
Surely that’s a way to keep it fresh every now and again , not killing off a character who you’ve barely got to know. In the first few series the killing was a statement that it was life and death, and losing a few sent the message that anyone is a target , but now it feels like ‘we’ve run out of ideas so lets kill off X …..’
The shock has gone so the only way to put it back is to leave it for a while, let someone who wants to leave go off on a mission, drop the topic and move on – if they want to they can come back for an episode or permanantly and the show can continue – its the perfect programme for that kind of thing .
Great news that there’s definitely going to be another series of Spooks – the best thing on TV along with Dr Who – but does anyone know whether Peter Firth is to be in it, because frankly, what would be the point without ‘Harry’? Also, agree entirely with comments about scheduling in Scotland – I had no idea it had moved from Monday to Saturday and had to catch up on the iPlayer, which is just not the same.
Speaking as someone from Scotland, I do think that the BBC had a lot of nerve changing the schedule on us like that. Admittedly we have Sky so we were able to follow it on BBC London without too much hassle, but please BBC, leave the schedule alone – it confuses the life out of our Sky scheduler. And I agree with L Hodgson – iPlayer is a useful tool for catching up if you have to and it does “make the unmissable unmissable”, but it’s not nearly the same.