Episode five
A gripping episode sees
this season really earn its spy points courtesy of three separate yet
intertwining strands. Alex is sent on what seems like a traditional mission to
infiltrate a house to lift the contents of the safe. Yassin will be joining him
and needless to say there aren’t any funnies on the way. Yet this turns out to
be different from expected – after all Scorpia don’t specialise in conventional
crime- challenging Alec’s moral stance over killing people as he watches Max Grendel
being shot. After Alex is incensed by this he uses some of the kit from the job
to break into Julia’s office which of course he was expected to do. Scorpia’s
sneakiness knows no bounds.
There he finds more
evidence over his father’s death- and the jaw dropping reveal that it was
actually Miss Jones who ordered the trigger to be pulled on his father twenty
years back. This is like a lot of shapes suddenly fitting into holes and
explains her unusually caring attitude towards Alex. Or does it? There’s bound
to be more twists but this plot really fizzles. You can feel the rage bubbling
up inside Alex- both Otto Farrant and Sofia Helin are excellent throughout this
episode as both chracters are playing the cat and mouse game.
The issues raised are
knotty indeed- Alex wants revenge, he says, for what happened to his father yet
so far he has been both reluctant to kill or even allow others to do so. His
reaction to Yassin’s murder of Grendel suggests he will always find it hard to
pull the trigger.
This is also an episode
that gives Ace Bhatti’s Crawley and Nyash Hetendi’s Smithers something more to
do than peer at screens or look concerned. After Scorpia allow three days only
for their demand to be met, its up to the duo to try and find clues as to why
the footballers died, all of the same heart condition and all at once. The
results are ingenious though terrifying to consider. The discovery of how its
done doesn’t necessarily mean it will be easy to stop further attacks. You hope
nobody watches dramas like this with ill intent because there are plenty of
ideas here. Both this and Alex’s mission feel like real secret agent material
and are played with a sweep and atmosphere needed.
Sandwiched in between
we see Tom and Kira’s more low rent espionage as they gamefully find the
Scorpia base and follow Alex on his mission. There’s quite a chemistry
developing between these two and it does lighten the sombre mood a little. The
narrative does well involving everyone in the cast in what is definitely the
best episode of the season so far.
Episode six
There’s a slow dramatic
fuse burning during this compelling episode. Everyone is back in the UK now;
Alex is with Yassin preparing for his mission to assassinate Miss Jones while
Kira and Tom are also back and ready to tell all to Jack who gets involved as
only she can. It’s great to see Ronke Adekoluejo getting more back into the
centre of the story. There edginess of the episode revolving around whether
Alex will go through with the plan. There’s a lot of ground for Otto Farrant to
cover this time and he gets an opportunity to stretch his acting as well as wear
a disguise that makes him look like a heavy metal biker!
Meanwhile the
Department are trying to catch up especially after Jack has disputed the place
a bit. What you can see in Vicky McClure’s nuanced performance is that Miss
Jones knows what is likely to happen- later on as soon as she is aware her
apartment has been broken into she realises it is Alex before he even appears.
The tone is
understandably even more serious than usual though there is time for some
lighter fare; even some of the dialogue between Alex and Yassin has the feel of
two uneasy flatmates. At the end Miss Jones is facing Alex and the gun- we hear
shots being fired but we don’t see what happens. This is what cliffhangers were
invented for!
Episode seven
An episode that’s
largely exposition can be a bit dull but this is presented to maximum effect
and because we know the characters so well becomes an engrossing watch. We pick
up where part six left off with shots ringing out but Alex has not carried out the
assassination; rather he’s put three rather well separated bullets in the
fridge. What follows is his gradual thawing out as the true, true facts are
revealed. After the Departments somewhat cursory treatment of the teenager in
the past they are positively caring this week if only because time is running
out in the countdown to Scorpia’s city wide deployment of Invisible Sword.
The crisply written
script releases a lot more facts than you’d normally get in one go and has to
pivot Alex from being bitter and vengeful to changing sides back to the Department.
That it manages to do so in forty five minutes yet in a convincing manner is to
its credit. When it comes to a sequence where Blunt and Alex visit the bridge
where Alex’s father was apparently shot by Miss Jones we have a well mounted reproduction
of the events around the two which brings a lengthy scene to life. Very
cinematic and very well done, even down to a youthful looking Miss Jones as she
was.
What appeals so much
about this episode in particular and the season as a whole is an emphasis on
making the characters more identifiable than you’d expect. They may be spies
and counter spies but this season has drawn more out of them and the cast rise to
this opportunity. Stephen Dillane’s Blunt is a standout this episode as he
takes Alex through the tale and yet the character remains focussed on the wide
threat.
Bath is the city Scorpia
are targeting, it’s not mentioned in the episode but anyone whose been there
will recognise the particular stone most of its buildings are made from or the
curved Geogian exterior of the Circus buildings. With Alex not having been
aware of all this going on despite his incursion in Scorpia the episode sets
him up- willingly- for one more mission. And there’s still time for a romantic
interlude too! That the last scene has him promising he will come home makes
one rather worried as you know what usually happens when someone says that…
Episode eight
A wonderfully
calibrated finale sees Invisible Sword deployed in Bath to potentially
devesting effect. Alex has pretended to go back to Scorpia albeit with a
tracking device in his gut but that’s not all that’s in his body. In a casual
forgotten scene earlier on in the season he was given some pain relief inhaler
by Julia- this turns out to have been a dose of the thing needed to trigger
problems when Invisible Sword is launched. So that gives us two countdowns as
he’ll only have a couple of minutes to get clear. Setting all this inside and
above a church setting adds a strange combination of the old building and the
modern technology.
The episode reveals too
just how much personal feelings have driven Julia’s plan all along, whatever
she might say. There are some neat twists and some action too when the
Department storm the Scorpia operation. Its satisfying that even at denouement
Alex doesn’t kill anyone though it looks like he might have to despatch Nile.
Jason Wong has been a real asset to the season, more than just a henchman he is
clever as well. The lengthy combat scenes between him and Alex on the roof of
the Abby are really well done. One small thing though- surely a lot of people would
notice such a great big object on top of the place?
A victory then for the
Department and for Alex too who seems like he’ll get to live his best life without
being bothered by further missions. However, the door is still open and now Mrs
Jones is in charge he could be more receptive to future offers. The episode does
have a mid-credits sequence that rounds things off perfectly.
It’s been stated that
this is the last season of this particular iteration and while the younger cast
have gown up and many of the older cast may be harder to get in future this
production team should surely make something else. All three seasons of this series
have been produced to a very high standard and maybe the slightly ambiguous
look Alex gives at the end shows that there could be something in the future.
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