[Spoilers] Sir Harry Pearce

[Silktie]

(24-01-2010 04:46 PM)JHyde Wrote:  So now that we've caught up to it in the rewatch, I wanted to talk about Harry in 1.6. The first episode where we really see who he is, both his best and his worst. Not always cool, calm and collected that's for certain.

The thing is, I happen to agree with him about not turning your head from a known attack for a possible one. This is one of those times in the show where it was Harry vs the team, and in this case I think he was absolutely right. What did everyone else think?

And when Tessa threatens him over Bill Crombie, did you think he had been cowardly? Or did you just see it as typical of Tessa's dastardly character that she would stoop so low?

I also think Harry was right. I thought, given his history with McCann, he acted pretty reasonably at the beginning to let the team decide whether the meet with McCann should go ahead. He was absolutely right to mistrust McCann's promise not to launch a terror attack as well. The only thing Harry put his foot down about was not allowing the bomb in the train station to explode. Perhaps, if Tom had explained his plan to Harry instead of going behind his back, he might have persuaded Harry. I thought it took guts from Harry to tell the team why he hated McCann so much as well. That can't have been easy. In the end, McCann played MI5 like a banjo - yes he did have information they needed but he used that to set up the attack on the politician we see in 2.1, using the bomb in the laptop given to Tom as a diversion. Harry was right not to trust him.

Re Tessa, I thought she was trying to play Harry, but that she couldn't have known the real circumstances of what happened with Bill. So maybe there was a question about what Harry could have done, but in light of what we know of Harry up to this point I couldn't see him being able to live with himself if he had betrayed his friend like that.