Series 10 Rumours & Speculation

[binkie]

(04-12-2010 09:47 PM)Nitrus Wrote:  Flashback montages are corny and overused. Spooks is a show that has always done things differently and I would hate for it to get a cliched ending.

I guess it depends how brave the show is feeling on the day. If the show-runners choose the most obvious viewers' reward option, we may well be taken down the road of the flashback / montage o'memories (or the road to Harry and Ruth sharing a sunset. Choose your poison).

I'd like to think there is a different kind of viewers' reward in store for a show like Spooks. This is, for the most part, an intelligent narrative, full of eliptical observations and double-edged significance for both storyline and character development. Editorially speaking, montages tend to have an unfortunate (?, sorry BravoNine, I can't think of a better word just now) effect of conferring stipulated meaning on an event or image because they are, more often than not, intended to illustrate the point of view or level of understanding of a particular character. Spooks is about more than any one particular character. The point of the show is the continuity, and necessity, of effort. That can't be about one character, even where the rhetorical purpose of that character is to embody continuity.

I live in hope that this show would prefer to signal its departure by making reference to the future, rather than the past. History helps in the planning, but not so much in the action. MI5 is a snake eating its own tail, because that is the nature of the world in which it operates. Harry would be dead now if he thought too much about people and things that are gone or destroyed. Spooks is pretty much required, by virtue of the tack it has taken, to finish on a note of KBO, rather than one of passive reflection. But what do I know? I thought Buffy should have ended after season 5 because I liked the fact the show was brave enough to kill her and leave her friends adrift. This is only one of many reasons I am not a creative writer!