Spooks (series 10)

• Peter Firth as Harry Pearce
• Nicola Walker as Ruth Evershed
• Max Brown as Dimitri Levendis
• Shazad Latif as Tariq Masood (episodes 1–2)
• Lara Pulver as Erin Watts
• Geoffrey Streatfield as Calum Reed

• Simon Russell Beale as Home Secretary William Towers
• Jonathan Hyde as Ilya Gavrik
• Alice Krige as Elena Gavrik
• Matthew Macfadyen as Tom Quinn (episode 6)

Jonathan Brackley and Sam Vincent, who have been the head writers for the previous ninth series of Spooks, returned to their writing duties for the tenth series.[12] Sean Cook and Anthony Neilson are also writers of the series.[13] Alrick Riley, Julian Holmes and Bharat Nalluri are the series directors, with Nalluri directing the last two episodes. Chris Fry is the series producer, and Jane Featherstone, Simon Crawford Collins and Howard Burch are the executive producers.[13]

Early on in the series's developmental stage, it was decided that it would only consist of six episodes,[6] likely because of budget cuts at the BBC.[14] The series featured a mix of standalone stories, and a "big old arc" that runs through it.[15] The arc focuses on Harry, the only remaining original lead character from the first series.[16] The Harry/Ruth storyline continued, as Firth believed it is "too delicious to stop".[7] The series also saw the pair's relationship enter a new phase, though it may probably be "too late for them to proceed any further".[2] Brackley and Vincent realise that there are fans of the show who will be "immensely cheesed off if they get anything less than Ruth riding in on a unicorn to marry Harry in a white suit", but at the same time know other fans "love the uncompromising toughness of Spooks. And both viewpoints were always well represented around the table".[17]

The storyline also features Harry and the Section D team forging new relationships with different countries, including Russia, which in the series has a better image in the Middle East. Because of this, the writers storyline a deteriorating "Special Relationship" between Britain and the United States.[2] For the finale episode, the writers went through "countless" ideas for how it would end. Some of the dropped ideas lasted for weeks, one of them being Harry detonating a nuclear weapon in Siberia.[17] Other characters had their own stories as well. Dimitri was the "chief action man", with his very own centric episode, where he was to honeytrap a young woman in the third episode. Though Myles left the series, there were plans to explore her character's past further should Myles remain on board. On the other hand, it allowed the writers to introduce Erin Watts and Calum Reed.[15] Real world events were often written into Spooks episodes, though they do not alter their main plots.[18] Episodes of the tenth series made references to such world events in 2011 such as the 2011 Libyan civil war,[2] and the death of Osama bin Laden.[19] Filming took place from March,[7] to June 2011.[9]

In August 2011, Kudos announced that the tenth series of Spooks would be the final series. Executive producer Jane Featherstone decided to end the series during its writing stage, stating "It's very tempting to keep going, and we have had ongoing conversations with our partners at the BBC about it, but the heart of the show has become those two characters [Harry and Ruth] and I feel they own it. We've followed the arc of their personal story and I think they've brought us to a natural end, which you will all see played out later this year."[16] It was also intended to end the series "in its prime."[16] Writers Brackley and Vincent noted "there was always a strong possibility of it being the end, so throughout the [writing] process we were looking for ways to infuse it with a sense of finality. We'd done a fair bit of writing before it was made definite by Kudos – but had plenty of time to plot a true conclusion. And crucially, by the time we began to write the final ep, we knew it would be the last."[15] They also stated; "When Kudos asked for our opinion, we said we'd hate to see it cancelled on a cliffhanger – it just wouldn't be right, or fair on the fans. Call us suck-ups, but you have to really admire Kudos for having the confidence to kill off a very successful show – purely because it's the right thing creatively."[17] Firth believed the series is getting to a point where the producers were starting to run out of story ideas, as virtually every type of antagonists have been featured in past episodes.[7]

A number of trailers were produced before the broadcast of the tenth series. A first look trailer was first released in July 2011 on the BBC, which also consists clips from other BBC programmes including The Body Farm, Doctor Who, The Hour, Merlin and Page Eight.[20] In early September a short teaser trailer was released, which includes clips of the series with the tagline "This is the end."[21] This was followed by a full 30-second trailer a week later.[22]

The tenth series began broadcast on Sunday, 18 September 2011, during the 9 pm to 10 pm timeslot, on BBC One.[23] It was considered a move as previous series were often broadcast on a Monday. The move would make the finale series a "special event" by placing it on a Sunday night. However, it emerged that the final series would face off against the second series of the highly successful ITV1 period drama series Downton Abbey, which averaged nine million viewers in its first year. The BBC however, defended the position by saying that "Downton and Spooks are very different shows and offer a real alternative for audiences."[24][25]

After the broadcast of the first episode, Spooks received overnight viewing figures of 4.62 million with a 17 per cent audience share. It lost out to Downton Abbey which received almost twice the viewers, with nine million and a 34.6 per cent share. Overnight ratings for the series ten premiere was down from the 5.58 million that tuned in for the series nine premiere episode.[26] By the second week, overnight figures for Spooks went down nearly half a million to 4.15 million, as Downton ratings increased.[27] However, despite being trounced by Downton Abbey, Spooks saw a gradual increase in viewership over the subsequent weeks,[28][29][30] leading up to a boost of up to 5.13 million viewers for the final episode on 23 October 2011.[31] With consolidated ratings factored in, the last series of Spooks was given a per-episode average of 5.41 million viewers.[n 1]

Critical reactions to the series were polarised between positive and negative. Among the positive reviews, Peter Sharples of CultBox rated the series five out of five, commending it for looking "more cinematic than in previous years," adding "any reduction in budget certainly doesn't show, with the action scenes as impressive as ever". Sharples was also appreciative of the "pretty strong" new cast, including Pulver for "making a big impression as a tough action girl juggling responsibilities as section head with those of a single parent", and Streatfeild for being "amusingly cocky and insubordinate". Sharples also commented that "ultimately Series 10 belongs to Peter Firth and Nicola Walker (more so than ever in the final, heartrending moments), confirming that it is they who held Spooks together and, pushed even more to the fore, elevate the series to a new level".[32] Sam Wollaston of The Guardian's review was mostly a response to John le Carré who branded Spooks as "crap" for its lack of a true representation of MI5; "Lighten up J le C, no one thinks it is actually like that, it's just a bit of fun. And it is fun, exciting too. Plus it deals with important social issues...Spooks sends out positive messages about work and single-parenting; you don't get that in Tinker Tailor ... OK, it is crap, but good crap".[33] Morgan Jeffery of Digital Spy listed the final series of as "Best of the Rest" for 2011, television shows that failed to make the website's top 25 television series. Jeffery however, gave the series a favourable review, stating that although the show "waxed and waned over the years”, the tenth series "saw Spooks back on top form", adding "the final run unfolded with a great deal of pace, excitement and emotion".[34]

Adam Sweeting of The Arts Desk however, said that the tenth series "hadn't been the finest of seasons, partly because the death of Richard Armitage's Lucas North at the end of Series 9 left a void which was never successfully filled. Lara Pulver never seemed comfortable as Erin Watts, Section D's new head, because she looked as if she'd been seconded from a modelling agency, while promoting Dimitri (Max Brown) up the batting order merely allowed him to become more faceless by the hour".[35] Andrew Pettie of The Daily Telegraph believed that Spooks is looking "tattered and tired", with a plot that is "about as up-to-date as the Berlin Wall".[36] Pettie was also critical of the "motion analysis filter", a series-adopted technique for matching people by the way they walk. Pettie "The rare moments of intrigue were dredged from Harry's past affair with a Russian double agent. There will no doubt be more double-dealing to come. But in recent years the most enjoyable bits of Spooks have also been the least plausible, as the scriptwriters really let their hair down and do something silly", he rated the premiere episode two out of five.[36] Tom Sutcliff of The Independent also rated the premiere episode two out of five, stating "Spooks isn't even true to its own account of the world, let alone the one the rest of us inhabit. At one moment, a senior Russian minister was described as virtually unfollowable because of his wily knowledge of tradecraft. At the next, one of Harry's boys was sauntering past the boot of his car to clip on a tracker, in full view of the target and his security men".[19]