Spooks Series 3, Episode 1

It's always hard to resolve a cliffhanger over a year later, as the audience's memory of what happened to cause the tension at the end of the last series will have all but disappeared (especially when the previous series hasn't been repeated or released on DVD) and all your clever attempts to reveal just what was going on are lost in the cries of 'eh? what? who was that? what's going on?'

Cleverly then, Spooks doesn't really bother. After all, Matthew McFadyen's been on all the trailers, all the posters, so it's obvious he's not dead, and there's no real attempt to convince us otherwise. Instead, Howard Brenton's script (and had I realised he's written it, it might not have been as much a surprise) goes off on a completely different tack, instead using the fallout from the events at the end of Season 2 as the basis for a much more political story.

Interestingly, a couple of reviews in the papers have suggested - and I tend to agree - that Spooks much touted links with MI5 (after all, it's helped to boost recruitment for the Service) have meant that Brenton got the information to write a much more interesting story of political intrigues, rather than just a standard spy story. But then again, I must be wrong - after all a story that features references to a Prime Minister who loves anyone who proposes 'modernisation' and wants 'unambiguous intelligence' from a unified service has no relation to anyone in reality, I'm sure. One gets the feeling that many of Harry's complaints about Mace's plans was perhaps copied almost verbatim from complaints Brenton heard in reality, which is interesting in itself, setting up the supposed secret police amongst those who'd oppose such a thing.

Still, such matters are for another time, or hopefully no time, and instead we've got one of the BBC's top series back, and back on top form. Let's hope the rest of the series - which, it seems, has to replace most of the series' lead actors, a tough task at any time - keeps up the standard.