Spooks - Episode 5

It's all very well to have complex plots, surprising twists and miraculous savings of the country but when it gets so complicated that you don't really have the foggiest what is going on then you might as well be staring at a blank screen. I felt a bit like this after watching Episode 5 of Spooks, I enjoyed the agents saving the country from yet another threat but I hadn't really a clue what was actually going on.

Al Qaeda took a side step this week as the BBC tackled the world's economic crisis and like a phoenix from the flames came Maynard, a man that preyed on the economic downfall by insiders trading. It was apparent from the outset that with all the jargon being thrown around like it was everyday banter that I wasn't going to understand so with that in mind I simply sat back and watched as the team merged into their appropriate slots so as to carry out their operation flawlessly. Ross, becoming Jenny Hunter, soon ingraciated herself upon their target and was pulling numbers, figures, and share prices out of head like it was no ones business, whilst a rather handsome Lucas played along as her fiance Peter. Ben was renegaded to a coffee shop worker - only being able to pass Ros messages written on the inside of coffee cup holders, whilst Jo was on the street.

The crux of the matter was that financial pirate Maynard set the market shares in the BBC's fictional bank plummeting causing choas to the markets, panic to the public - of which Malcolm was one having his entire life savings with the bank concerned, and the British government clutching at straws as to what to do. If the government made a public announcement about the banks real debt - 65million - the economy and customer confidence would crumble, if they paid off the debt and kept it hidden the United Kingdom would be bankrupt. Things started to go array almost from the offset when Acer Darlek, right side man realised that Lucas was an agent and therefore so was Ros. Malcom was falling apart at the thought of his life savings vanishing, Jo was seeing the man she murdered everywhere she went, and as usual Harry was off the grid, tearing apart Connie's home with the adamant opinion that she was a mole. With a gun to head Ros must've been feeling very very lonely. Of course, our cold calculating vixen soon reversed the roles, had the Russian right side man on the floor and the financier target, trusting Ros after an explicit night of passion, switched sides, threw all his money back into the market thinking that the government was going to bluff him and lost everything in the process. Job once again done.

All this was very dramatic but my main fear was when Ros, after talking to Harry about Jo's problem marched off to find her with an envelope. A sudden fear overcame me and for a split few seconds I thought Jo was about to become the next Spook victim, being removed from the grid due to her paranoid delusions. It was with relief that a somewhat surprisingly soft spoken Ros showed her pictures of a dead Boscard confirming that Jo had indeed killed him and he wasn't walking the streets everywhere she went. Meanwhile Harry, after discovering nothing but a tape labelled to him at Connie's house, was finally convinced that she had in no way passed information to others about Sugarhorse - or even that she knew anything about it. It was Lucas that came up with the goods, remember one word that he'd heard through his tortured state - Pilgrim - and it threw up some damming evidence against Harry's old mentor the SpyCatcher.

I want to know more about Sugarhorse, I want to see Jo get a decent operation, and all I can ask is that after this episodes very confusing storyline they bring it back to Ruskies, Yanks and good old Al Qaeda terrorists!

BBC - Mondays at 21.00