The first recording today starts with the end of Holby City.
There’s a trail for the Stephen Poliakoff film Joes Palace.
Then, there’s a new episode of Spooks, and me being me, looks like I’ve not saved the first episode of the new series. I caught up on iPlayer and quite a lot happened.
MI5 (under the orders of the Home Secretary, bomb a train in Iran to try to stop a terrorist coming to the UK. But it seems that a foreign agent codenamed Copenhagen has manipulated their intel, and the man was carrying a vial of a deadly pathogen which was released by the explosion. The man contacts MI5 wanting to defect, so they bring him back, but he’s now been infected by the virus, and a team of mercenaries grab him and Zaf, and then later Adam. The mercenaries let the Iranian, Asnik, loose on the streets, where he stumbles around, infecting a lot of people.
Episode 2 opens with Asnik being brought to a hospital, where the team track him down and isolate the whole hospital. Harry tells Adam that he’ll be infectious in 14 hours. In the meantime he had to get on with the job.
Ros finds the bodies of the mercenaries who kidnapped Asnik and they’ve been burned. There’s six bodies. There were five mercenaries. Zaf might be one of the bodies.
They need to find anyone infected by Asnik on the street, so they use facial recognition.
Adam has been undercover, sleeping with the wife of the Iranian ambassador. He now has to break his cover to ask her if the Iranians have a vaccine to the virus. She’s not happy to see him, and doesn’t know anything.
Harry and the team pay a call to a retired agent, Connie, played by Gemma Jones.
She lives on top of a decommissioned Bio-weapons research facility, and the team have brought the top spies from the US, France, India and Russia. They want to find out which of them, if any, have a vaccine to the virus. It includes the US spy who told them about the virus in the first place.
One of them tells Ros he has a lead on Zaf. Harry warns her that it’s probably a trap.
They learn that the Russians already have a vaccine (or is it an antidote? this programme isn’t really sure of the difference). The UK Government is negotiating with them for it, but the deal is stalled. Connie steals Harry’s security pass, and leaves, then phones Malcolm to get him to add her to the security system at the Home Office, so she can walk in.
She gets to the Home Secretary’s office, and does a bit of social engineering to get rid of his secretary, then starts downloading all the data on her laptop. When the Home Secretary (Robert Glenister) comes out of his office, she deals with him. “Where’s Maggie?” “I’m afraid Maggie’s been called away, Home Secretary. Personal Emergency. We’ve called for a replacement.” “Do we… Have we met?” “Several times, yes.” “Well, uh, just let me know when the replacement’s here, the moment she arrives. And we need some more drinks in there, please.” “Absolutely.” Connie is immediately a favourite of mine. I suspect she might be named after a similar character in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy where she was played by Beryl Reid.
Ros meets with the French secret service. They have some information about Zaf’s whereabouts.
Adam and Jo go with the Russian spy to pick up the vaccine. Jo tells Adam to take the vaccine to the quarantine hospital while she and Edik, the Russian spy, deal with his returning comrades, who have realised they shouldn’t have given him the vaccine.
The Russians have Jo at gunpoint, and they call Adam to get him to return the vaccine. He says he will, but instead keeps going to the hospital, hoping that Harry can get an armed response team to save Jo. Jo, on the other hand, manages to overpower the man holding her, but only after he’s shot Edik.
Adam gets to the hospital, but he’s now so sick he can barely get out of the car. And another Russian spy has followed him, and takes the box of vaccines from him and walks away. I love this shot, as the man walks off with the vaccine, but we see a figure walking towards him which gradually resolves into Ros, who walks past him and jabs him with something that makes him collapse. She then walks back and takes the vaccine box.
I guess the vaccine was also an antidote, as it has miraculously cured Adam. He has to talk to Jo. “You OK?” “I’m still here. You?” “Still here.” “Jo… ..it was a difficult thing to do. But it was the right thing.” “I know that. I just wanted to see if you’d say that to my face.”
Connie delivers her information to Harry. “Documented proof of what the Government considered to be acceptable British casualties. Thousands of people dead if you hadn’t found that vaccine. Which means, you’ve got them where you want them… for five minutes.” Harry asks Connie to come back to the grid. “I need you, Connie. Malcolm needs you. I don’t want some cold-eyed fast-track postgraduate on the Grid. I need someone I can really, really trust.” “Well… I’ll give it my urgent consideration.”
Ros phones Adam to tell him she’s going to investigate the leads to Zaf. But when she rings off, someone shoots her with a dart and she collapses.
Media Centre Description: Drama series about the British Security Service. The highly-contageous plague-like virus unleashed by the Tehran blast is on the streets of London and a wounded, infected Zaf has been captured, possibly already killed. As the team races against time to stop the virus spreading, they corral and infect top international spies in a bid to discover a vaccine.
Recorded from BBC ONE on Tuesday 23rd October 2007 20:58
BBC Genome: BBC ONE Tuesday 23rd October 2007 21:00
After this there’s a trail for Waterloo Road. Then the recording stops with the start of the 10 O’Clock News, leading with a report on the failures in voting changes in the elections to the Scottish Parliament.
The next recording start immediately with the next episode of Spooks – Season 6 Episode 3.
The US Spy tells the Iranian ambassador that it was the British who bombed the train in Tehran. He misses out the important information that they were manipulated by false information from the mysterious Copenhagen. Well, he’s probably still salty that Harry kidnapped him and tortured him to find out about the vaccine.
A cargo plane crashes, close by a US air base in Norfolk.
Ros has been kidnapped. It’s the French secret service agent she spoke to in the previous episode who was looking for her boss. She’s tied up and water is dripping on her face, so it’s torture too.
Harry is informed he’s getting a knighthood.
Malcolm has been sent out into the field, to look at the location of the plane crash, where Harry’s team seem to have been excluded. They’ve sent Malcolm because he also has contacts with a group of UFO cranks who have a camp near the airbase, but I’m immediately on edge because if there’s one thing Spooks likes to do it’s put the usually office-bound characters in danger. They’ve done it once with Malcolm, and they even killed off Malcolm’s colleague, not to mention Ruth having to vanish forever, so I’m going to be on edge now.
Jo has to contact an old boyfriend at the MOD to find out more about why the MOD are keeping Harry’s team away from the crash. He tells her that the plane was carrying highly toxic chemicals. They have to tell Malcolm that he’s been exposed to very poisonous material, and he has to get to a particular location so he can be evacuated to hospital. YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN?
Adam comes to bring Malcolm back, but Malcolm refuses to come. “Jo told me the name of that stuff. It’s not only that I don’t want to leave you flapping in the wind, but we need to find out for ourselves what happened to that plane. Anyway, being kept alive for a few days – what sort of life is that?” “A few days is a few days.” “Not in the condition I’ll be in, it’s not.”
Ros is still being interrogated when masked men appear and pull guns. But instead of killing Ros they kill the woman questioning her.
She’s let out of the building she’s being held in, which turns out not to be in Denmark, but somewhere near Whitehall (quite close to the ICA it looks like). She’s met by James Laurenson as Sholto, who represents a group called Yalta, who would quite like Ros to work for them. I have to say, if a company kidnapped and tortured me then offered me a job, I don’t think I’d be jumping at the offer.
Adam and Malcolm meet with the UFO cranks. Adam wants to get into the base, and gets the cranks to agree to cause a disturbance as a distraction.
Connie and Jo have found out more about the plane that crashed. “All cargo checked by company and security – no bombs, no chemicals, no terrorists.” “When did the MOD requisition the cargo?” “That’s the thing. They didn’t know the MOD had anything to do with the flight. The Americans fed us a line.”
Jo finds that one of the faces at the UFO camp might be an MOD operative.
Adam and Malcolm find their way into the base, to where the fuselage of the plane is being kept. “If there was a bomb on board, there would be traces of explosives. Also the fuselage would have been ripped apart in a particular way.” “Malcolm. It might still be dangerous.” “Not for me.”
Ros and Jo pull in Jo’s scummy ex, and grill him for more info. They learn that there was no toxic chemicals, that was a cover story from the Americans to keep MI5 out. When they press him for the reason for the cover story, he drops the name Aurora.
Adam and Malcolm have a quiet moment. “I’m not sure my mother would want to see me with my hair falling out, multiple organ failure. That’s not what I want to leave her with.” “What does she think you do? What lie have you told her? Accountancy? IT?” “She thinks I do what you do.” “And here you are doing it. You should have been out there doing this with us years ago. I’ll stay with you… you know that.” I wonder why this scene wasn’t put before the previous scene – I would probably have been in pieces if it had been, but now it’s mostly ironic, now we’ve learned the chemical spill is a cover story.
They make their way to the secret area in the base to find out what secret was worth such a huge cover up. Judging by the control screens, it could be the Enterprise D.
Aurora is a new US spy plane. Malcolm access the route recording system, and starts sending the data to the grid for decoding. But the undercover MOD spy comes in, attacks Adam, and tells one of the cranks to trip the alarm. But Malcolm pulls out a power cable and zaps him with it.
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the base, Harry is with the US consul, having led him far away from the secret room saying he saw someone in the shadows. “Maybe it was a cat or something.”
Malcolm gets the decrypted flight information back from the grid, showing that the Aurora had been flying back to the base at the same time as the cargo plane, so the crash was probably a collision.
But the other flight is even more interesting to the team. It matches Zaf’s route back to the UK after the train bomb. “They were behind it. If they were able to track Zaf back from Iran and ambush him…” “Then they knew about our train operation in Tehran.” “They used us to bring about the carnage with the blast. The Americans were running Copenhagen. They’ve been lying to us about everything.”
Harry gets the story from the consul. “Was all this to do with the capture and torture of my officer?” “That wasn’t my doing. Our hired guns turned on us.” “You wanted to know what we knew. Well, let me save you any further bother. Your agency, calling itself Copenhagen, fed us false intelligence in order to ensure that we created a bio-weapons spillage in Tehran.” “So whatever happened in Tehran, the United Nations is now aware of Iran’s illegal development of WMDs, which is hardly a bad thing.”
Escaping from the base, Malcolm wants to stay behind and see Aurora.
“When Voltaire was on his death bed, the priests tried to persuade him to renounce the devil. He said this was no time to be going around making enemies. I’ve always admired that.” “Malcolm, I think there is maybe something I should tell you.” “What?” “You’re not contaminated. You’re not dying.” “What do you mean?” “There’s no chemicals.” “How do you know?” “They were just trying to scare us all off. I can see it now. It’s how these people think.” “But I felt…” “It was fear. I’ve got a signal again. Jo’s old flame, Alan, came clean.” “You bastard. Why didn’t you tell me?” “Because that Malcolm was invincible. He wasn’t going to die in some crappy air base. He was going to get us out.” OK, now I’m crying. Well played, Spooks writers.
Adam’s source at the Iranian Embassy is still interested in him, despite now knowing he’s a spy.
Harry gets dressed up for his knighthood.
Ros tells Yalta she’s interested.
Media Centre Description: Drama series about the British Security Service. As the team fear reprisals on Iran following the revelation of their bio-weapons program, a UK plane is apparently hijacked and kamikazied into a US air base by terrorists. However, as Malcolm, Adam and Harry visit the US base near the crash, and Ros is captured and then tempted by the Yalta organisation, the team discover the sordid depths of an international cover-up.
Recorded from BBC THREE on Tuesday 23rd October 2007 22:30
BBC Genome: BBC THREE Tuesday 23rd October 2007 22:30
After this there’s a trail for Celebrity Scissorhands.
And 60 Seconds of news.
Then the recording stops after the start of Drop Dead Gorgeous.
The last recording today is an episode of Comedy Lab – Documental. It rings no bells for me whatsoever.
It feels a bit Ali G inspired, but it seems these “characters” are real. Like Asad Mercury Malik, a Conservative who apparently called himself a philanderer on his leaflets so people wouldn’t think he was gay, as he was named after Freddie Mercury.
Andy Fleer the Race Walking Coach.
Leanne Campbell, a DJ at Juice FM.
The lads doing Parkour. “Parkour: Noun. Jumping about with your shirt off.”
Tony Nyland (sp?) a Labour councillor. “I were in t’ Royal Marines.”
There’s a church service for clowns.
Christian Hardacre, who’s a pub landlord, apparently.
Here’s the whole show.
Media Centre Description: Fly-on-the-wall documentary sketch show where the comedy characters are real people. Meet speed-walking coach Andy ‘Walkie Talkie’ Flier, Manchester urchins The Benders and Juice FM’s dippy DJ Leanne.
Recorded from Channel 4 on Tuesday 23rd October 2007 23:35
Here’s the ad breaks from Documental
Adverts:
- Bodyform
- Ford Fiesta
- Argos – Roy Wood
- Russian Standard
- Sims 2 Castaway
- Brylcreem
- Alcohol – Know Your Limits
- Bulmers Original
- Eurostar
- Post Office – Joan Collins
- trail: The Sopranos
- Coors Light
- Oxo
- Tesco
- Saw IV in cinemas
- Sky
- Argos
- Heinz Mum’s Own Recipe
- Sony Ericsson Walkman Phones
- Burger King Angry Whopper
- L’Oreal Derma Genesis
VHiStory 