Spooks is a BBC spy series with MI5 agents as the heroes. They protect us from MI6, the CIA, and British politicians while thwarting the occasional terrorist plot to set off a WMD in London. It's been running for awhile, but I just found it on one of the cable repeat channels. I love it.

For non-British readers: MI5 - British intelligence group who deal with domestic intelligence; MI6 - British intelligence group who deal with foreign intelligence; CIA - just what you think, US Government intelligence group that is the American equivalent of MI6,, operating outside the US.

The basic plot lines for the last four episodes:

In episodes one and two, MI5 thwart a coup staged by MI6.

In Episode three, a terrorist cell intends to set off a weapon of mass destruction in London. Prevented, of course.

In Episode four, MI5 guarantee a meeting on African trade relations goes through, mainly by blackmailing the US, Japan and assorted others. They foil a plot to assassinate a charismatic African leader, but discover he bought biological weapons from the US (to be sold through Japan) to commit genocide against a tribal group in the north of his country. They check it out, using material supplied by another African president and are told by their British political masters to ignore it. They release the attempted assassin and give her a gun. She shoots the wicked African president. She is then shot by a CIA agent despite MI5 trying to protect her. Their political master tells them they shall all be fired... but clever head of MI5 has taped him saying the British Government doesn't give a damn about Africa. It's a continent of barbarians and who cares if they all commit genocide? The British Prime Minister needed a photo op and he got it. MI5 head threatened to release the tape to the newspapers. The Government Minister backed down.

As you see, the plots are convoluted. Everyone in this contextual universe thinks the end justifies the means. Only MI5 draws a line in the sand - there are things they will not do.

In the WMD episode, a terrorist cell has bought a weapon of mass destruction to set off in the center of London. Ruth, conscience of the group, says this same bomb has been set off by the Russians in Chechnya and the US in Iraq.

The head of MI5 says he not willing to allow the destruction of London out of some sense of fair play.

Terrorists are often presented somewhat sympathetically. They're not lunatics and they frequently act in reaction to US and British actions in their own countries.

MI6, the CIA and politicians of all nationalities are generally portrayed as acting in self-interest; they want power, they feel nothing but contempt for the British and any other public and they see terrorist attacks are an Opportunity Moment. They occasionally stage them themselves.

Morality is the theme that unites the series.  How far are we willing to go for security? Will we sacrifice civil liberties? Kill innocent people? Torture? How far are we willing to go to maintain our high standard of living? Let people in the poorer nations of the world starve, go without medicine?

Another episode opens with an elderly woman driving an old car. She gets out at the gate to a prison - heavy, massive, ornamented gates. She stands, alone, in front of the gate and sings the Internationale. A door in the gate opens and a man comes out. He joins the woman in singing the Internationale.

The man has served twenty years in HRM prison for spying. An Englishman, he worked for the Soviet Union and gave the names of six Russians spying for Great Britain to his handler in the Soviet Embassy. The six were executed as a result.

The head of MI5 visits the man and his wife in their house. He tells the released spy that the son of his handler used his father's contacts to buy public assets in the new Russia cheaply,then asset stripped. He has come to the UK to do the same thing. The British Government intends to sell all the National Health Service hospitals to him. He will then strip them of their assets, sell off hospital equipment and destroy the NHS. Mi5 wants the released spy to work for them and block the sale.

"Why should I help you?"

"Because I never doubted your principles. You did what you did because you thought it would improve the lives of ordinary people. The NHS has done that. Destroying the NHS will harm everyone, but most of all the people you fought for."

The released spy agrees to work for MI5.

The Russian gangster is defeated. In the final scuffle as he is arrested, the Englishman is injected with a drug that destroys the mind. He's been warned of this drug - MI5 thinks it has an antidote, but it's not been tested.

In the second to the last scene we see the English spy in a wheelchair, blankly staring. The antidote didn't work.

In the last scene, we see the head of MI5 and Ruth having coffee in the canteen, reading the papers. "Income tax is going up 4p in the pound."

Two other recurrent themes in Spooks: nostalgia, once we acted from principle. "We are better than that." is a recurring line. The second theme: being better  has a price. The English spy is a vegetable, the head of MI5 has higher taxes.

Everything has a cost that must be paid. Any civilian wandering into MI5 operations who agrees to help in an MI5 operation ends up dead. Every three or four episodes, one of the major characters in Spooks dies - or worse. I was shocked the first time this happened. Series don't kill off major ensemble players. Spooks does.

An ecologist I know commented that global warming can't be managed because no elected official in a democracy could introduce the kinds of measures needed to keep the rise in temperature to manageable levels. Free trade benefits the First World, not the Third. Mass agriculture results in cheap food but destroys the environment. Freedom of the press can result in newspapers knowingly lying.

The public good does require private sacrifice; education, the health service, have to be paid for by taxes. The current attitude appears to be that as long as 51% of voters are not required to make any private sacrifice to hell with the public good. The powerful make the laws and the powerless pay the price of those laws.

I wonder how realistic Spooks is. The underlying moral issues, exploring what we in a rich, relatively tolerant democracy, are willing to do to maintain security and wealth is very realistic. On Spooks, MI5 and the rest do a lot of things I would prefer the intelligence services not do in my name. I doubt real MI5 agents  are as concerned with negotiating murky moral mazes; they probably just assume they're the Good Guys and anything they do is all right. (Sort of a Calvinist approach; we are the elect and thus sinless. Virtue as an attribute of Status.) I'm sure the attrition rate is not accurate - if an actual agent died every few weeks, I think they'd have mass resignations. On tellie, MI5 is quintessentially effective. They can hack any computer, decipher any code, never shoot the hostage in front of the bad guy. I think our intelligence services have better equipment, training and agents than assorted non-governmental terrorist groups--which is why arguments that we must sacrifice civil liberties because terrorists have the internet and email seems absurd to me.

I wish I knew what MI5 thought of Spooks. MI6 probably hates it. MI5? They might dismiss it as silly, or a fun hour. (Since the endings are rarely happy and it's not very comfortable to watch it's hard to see it as a fun hour; but maybe they do. Perhaps it's so unrealistic that they see no connection to their day to day job.) The Guardian or the Observer used to have a column where experts in a field commented on their portrayal in a movie or tv series. I wish they'd ask MI5 about Spooks.

I daydream about some vast intelligence trolling search engine coming across the title of this blog and investigating. Maybe if I put in a sentence along the lines of "Plans to blow up St. Pancreas Rail Station" they'll pick it up. (I have no such plans, by the way. I like St. Pancreas Train Station: another example of Public Good constructed by Victorian England that is beautiful and lasting... what has my generation done that is comparable???) If such trolling takes please, please send me a comment and tell me what you think of the show.