I have to admit, I was somewhat disappointed when I started watching Spooks, the Brit spy show I took up at my professor's recommendation. I was somewhat petulent in wanting multi-arc episodes, and a little bit vexed by the show's reliance on some stereotypes of Americans. But I'm into the second season now, and I think I'm finally convinced. The show keeps on being surprising, whether they're showing a lonely Serbian war criminal getting upset when he discovers the number at which he's trying to reach a spy who he fell for when she was in disguise as a video store clerk has been disconnected, or whipping out a Liar's Poker reference. And some of the plot decisions have been surprising. I particularly liked one that posited that coal miners who resisted during the strikes in 1984 and 1985 morphed into a band of anti-government hackers--it's farfetched, sure, but it's creative, and it gave the folks who run the show the excuse to use one of those quintessentially UK actors with a ravaged face in a terrific role as a miner-turned-educator.
The show cut down on the drama in the personal lives of the spies in the second season (although the addition of Ruth Evershed is fantastic. Anyone who says in the midst of a VX attack "We should be with our loved ones. Even if we've only got a cat." is excellent.), and as it's done that, has seemed more sharply aware of the wider world in which it operates. It's far from a perfect show, and it's definitely the thing that's made me realize how much The Wire and the original State of Play spoiled me for single-episode procedural arcs when the acting's this good. But it's smart, and it's enjoyable, and if it were made in the United States it would all be colored wigs and martial arts (of course, since it's the UK, we get people crucified on Hampstead Heath by Russian mobsters for our drama). Some day, we'll do the rest of government (and by that I mean civil service) as well as we do cops. Until that day, I'll be watching Spooks.