I really enjoyed the (edited) S1/S2 that USA Networks carried here, but after the finale between Tom/Harry it never aired again so I thought it was dead until this thread made me get S3 from NetFlix – WOW, the way they handled the Tom setup and then his departure was absolutely awesome. Quite possibly the two best episodes I’ve seen so far just because of the emotional responses it got from me (not include Zoe in her blue sweater…)
Same thing happened to me! (Although I thought the show was on A&E.) I too thought it was dead because my TiVo Season’s Pass just stopped picking it up. After a long while, TiVo started letting some episodes past the goalie, but I never really got the transition from Season 2 to Season 3. For me, Tom is forever swimming in the ocean.
Thanks for the heads up about the show being available on Netflix. I loved the first two seasons and can’t wait to start catching up properly.
Netflix lists the DVD sets by volume. Hopefully the volume numbers match up with season numbers, though I’m not sure what appears on the DVD sets will be the same stuff that appeared here in the states on teevee.
-Amanpour
I’ve been watching this on BBC America, they just started airing the first series this last tuesday.
[spoiler warning]
I’m up to the beginning of Season 5. I’m impressed they lost the 3 main characters in one season and didn’t just survive, but thrived. I’d still love to see Tom come back as a guest star or whatever.
It was a little absurd how Jo is an unemployed journalist one week, and by the next episode is running along with swat teams, but whatever.
Volume = Season. If you haven’t lived them already, the dvd’s have some of the most awful menus I’ve ever experienced. I haven’t seen anything that clumsy in a while, not even in the early days of PC-Interactive CD’s.
The dvd sets claim to have a few extra minutes of unaired footage, but since the original version I saw was the Iraqi bootleg, I can’t really say what was legitimately missing and what was just a disc error. They also have extras and interviews, but I’ll be damned if I’m messing with those menus.
S5 is certainly starting with a jolt, I look forward to getting past ep1 sometime later this month.
Amanpour=You must see the beginning of S3. It’s a pretty defining moment. All of s3 is, for that matter.
I just picked up season one because of the recommendations in this thread. Also, BBC DVD sets are bloody expensive.
I couldn’t make it through the first episode. I made it as far as the scene where they’re breaking into the abortion clinic bomber mastermind’s house (never mind that they figured out who it was 10 minutes into the show), when they let out her cat. Three grown adults talking very seriously and intently about the plan to lure the cat back to the house with a special plate of wet and dry cat food, with the action techno music in the background, no, I’m sorry, that was just retarded.
Expensive and as Lizard_King said, the menus are a majorly craptacular. I have the bbc region 1 disc of the first 6 eps or so. I think it was $35 at the time.
The old BBC serialisations of Le Carre’s books. with Alec Guiness as George Smiley and Deighton’s Game, Set and Match trilogy are also worth checking out if you can find them.
The original gritty spy story in my opinion is the movie version of ‘The Spy Who Came in From the Cold’ starring Richard Burton, based on another Le Carre novel.
I started my wife on ep 2 for just that reason, and I think she is better for it. There is absolutely no excuse for that episode other than to introduce characters. I think the cat thing was an experiment (mostly failed) to show the anti-hollywood approach the show was going after. On the one hand, the personal relationships, and on the other, the detail shit that brings spies and their targets down. Ep 2 is usually the hook for people to stay with it, and the end of season 2-beginning of 3 is what I’ve so far seen as the high water mark of action.
But I completely understand that being a dealbreaker, and I’m sorry it didn’t work out. Like Veronica Mars and other questionable shows that I like, it took me a few episodes to like it and there’s still one every now and then that makes me question my support.
It’s still like 30 something. It’s the later full seasons that go for an hboesque 55$.
We watched episode two of season one last night. Good god, what a shocker. No American network would ever have the balls to make an episode like that.
Good stuff so far.
1-3 I think are well worth it. 4 awaits my completion of 5 for a verdict (I hope), as I’m sure you’ll understand once you see it.
Like I said, s.ep 1.2 is the hook for new viewers. Do you think you would have been better off without the amateurish pilot?
The second episode is what hooked me as well but, to be honest, I don’t think it’s beyond some of the stuff that 24 has pulled in it’s prime.
24?!?
Okay.
I had to drop that show when Dennis Hopper showed up with that ridiculous Estonian accent (or whatever it was) in the first season. I tried giving the second season a chance, but dropped it in the first ten minutes of the first episode. His family again? Really?
Perhaps this comment is a function of not watching the show for even a single full season, but I did not see a single moment of 24 that could have licked the bootstraps of MI:5.
“You think I work for Drazen…but I don’t!”
“I trusted you Nina.”
-Amanpour
Well I’m loathe to post spoilers for 24 in this thread but it sounds like you didn’t see several moments from the show I’m thinking of (particularly something that happens to a character near the end of the third season and to a lesser extent events that happened at in the finale of the first season and the end of the Season 2 premiere).
And I wasn’t really looking to debate the relative merits of the shows overall- I was specifically referring to 24’s willingness to do some rather pretty shocking stuff with their characters.
The pilot was definitely meh. A lot of series start out with a really craptacular pilots, but end up being decent shows.
I take your point Kevin and appreciate you not posting spoilers to make it.
If I ever get the time I’ll give it a closer look.
-Amanpour
Trust me. If you haven’t yet gotten through 2 and 3, you haven’t really seen the show flex. Even its mountain lion episodes are light years ahead of 24, if only because the stories aren’t driven by the ridiculous 24 hour never ending crisis mechanic.
I’ve seen through Season 2 and I’ll probably be catching up on the rest this summer.