Spooks is back, and a good thing too. To be honest, I think that in this opener, we saw the best and worst of Spooks. On the one hand, and beware that there are spoilers ahoy here, Tom seemed to sort out his spot of difficulty with remarkable speed. From the cliffhanger, there seemed no quick fix, yet within 60 minutes, he'd wrapped it all up quite neatly.
On the other hand, we were introduced to a likeable new agent, who ended up in a perilous situation at the end of the episode. I can honestly say that I didn't know whether he was going to live or die - something you can never be quite sure of with Spooks. Tim McInnerny was introduced as a fine foe - the chair of the joint intelligence committee who's ear seems easily bent by politicians. When he slapped CIA contact, and lover of Tom, Christina Dale, you felt like thumping him yourself.
This series, the BBC seem to have dispensed with the "next episode right now on BBC Three" thing, with next week's episode being shown, oddly enough, on Saturday nights. Instead, we get an interactive thing on Sky and Freeview, but not cable. I had a bash at the Freeview version, but frankly it didn't work on my prehistoric OnDigital Philips box (yup - one of the first boxes released). The idea of the interactive feature is that Harry talks you through some training modules for the first five weeks, and you have to press buttons to answer questions at the end of each module. Your total score is totted up at the end of 25 minutes or so of this. Basically this is Fighting Fantasy roleplaying books with TV: there are two channels showing essentially the same footage, and at the end of a section, you either watch Harry saying well done, or him telling you to buck your ideas up. Sometimes you have to choose camera angles or audio feeds, but that really involves flicking from channel to channel. My poor old box couldn't cope with all this excitement, so I fear I'm going to miss out on the delights of interactive.
BBC Four ran a series of programmes based around the fact that this year is the centenary of Graham Greene's birth.
Graham Greene is a writer who fascinates me, yet one about whom I've read very little - I've probably seen more of his films that read his books. I suppose that I'm deliberately not hurrying through his books so that I have plenty to read as I get older. Well something like that anyway.
BBC Four showed a few films, including the excellent The Third Man and the not so excellent The Human Factor. They also reshowed the famous Arena documentary from 1983, and the documentary narrated by Greene about The Other Graham Greene detailing another man who maskeraded as Greene around the world. There were also a couple of new programmes. One was an in depth piece examining the circumstances of the making of The Third Man. I'm sure that this will turn up on the next DVD release of this classic. The other Arena programme was a real oddity. One of the most famous things about Greene was his reluctance to allow himself to be photographed or, particularly, filmed. So when he spoke at the NFT in 1984 in one of their Guardian lectures, he wanted to ensure that they didn't videotape it, as was their habit. But it was filmed surreptitiously from a booth near the back, on a poor quality VHS camcorder. This second Arena documentary, was this tape. It was obviously a single camera position, but it actually makes for fascinating watching. Greene obvioulsy hated many of the productions based around his works, and I suppose it's a shame that he didn't get to see some of the more recent adaptations like The End of the Affair and The Quiet American - both of which are superior to their earlier screen incarnations. A great rare interview, and a surprising treat.
Incidentally, a throw away remark made by Greene in the NFT interview has revealed a series to me that I never knew existed. Called Shades of Greene, it was a series of short stories adapted by Thames TV's offshoort - Euston Films. That probably explains why the same company later adapted Monsigneur Quixote (which I note has recently been released on DVD). I'd love to see Shades of Greene given a DVD release.