Spooks (BBC1)

MI5 man Tom Quinn really knows how to sweet talk a woman. "Thirty-six per cent of all detonators fail on improvised explosive devices," he told girlfriend Ellie.

"That's very reassuring," she noted, with more than a trace of saracasm.

She was remarkably calm, considering she and daughter Maisie had narrowly escaped being blown up in their home.

This, Spooks followers will recall, provided the cliffhanger for the first, and surprisingly popular, series about those who protect Britain's national security.

Nearly being blown to smithereens was probably the most fun Ellie had had since taking up with po-faced Tom. If that sounds a flippant remark about a serious life-threatening situation that's ever-present in our society, that's only toeing the Spooks line, which takes real life events from the headlines and uses them in a series that's 100 per cent hokum. This week, Irish and Serbian terrorists; next week, Muslim suicide bombers.

Attempts are made to give the agents some sort of private life. Tom finds himself in the same dilemma as (ex)policewoman Kate in EastEnders - a choice between love and job. Whereas Kate opted to move in with Phil Mitchell (what a silly girl!), Tom chooses his career.

What Spooks does best is having glamorous men and women - do all MI5 workers moonlight as models? - run around saying things like "I smell a leak in the MoD", "This is now officially the day from hell" and, in moments of extreme danger, "Bloody Nora!".

While Tom ("my family needs me") was attempting to woo back his girlfriend, colleague Zoe ("if I don't get some sleep soon I'll pass out") was posing as a video shop manager and in danger of being exposed by an old school friend.

The frantic plot moved swiftly from Irish Republican splinter groups to a Serbian war criminal wanting revenge on the British Government that he held responsible for deaths in his family. Blowing up the War Cabinet was his ojbective. Or, in Spooks-speak, "something really big is going down right now".

Need I tell you that the mighty Quinn saved the Queen and country, without his grim expression changing one iota? Of course not, he lives to fight and love another day - which is more than can be said for the Serbian villain. "What's going to happen to me?," he asked on being captured.

"Bad things," replied Tom, who's not against taking the law - and the bad guy's neck - into his own hands. He didn't like the idea of the villain languishing in a nice comfy prison cell and had him put on a plane to Egypt, alerting the authorities that he was a paedophile.

"You know what they do them in Egypt, don't you?," one Spook observed. The exact details were left to the imagination, but I could have sworn a flicker of a smile passed across Tom's usually stoney face.

Published: 03/06/2003