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February 21, 2006

"I want hard bastards. I want MI-5."

(dialogue excerpt from Episode 8)

I've finished watching Season 3 of MI-5 and it did not disappoint. MI-5 is consistently one of the best television shows around. It addresses varied aspects of intelligence work, the clandestine lifestyle, morality and national security, and is not afraid to call a spade a spade when face to face with Islamic terror. It is superb.

If Season 3 has a theme, it is of the trials of love while engaged in serving one's country, a cruel mistress indeed. Also, extended ruminations on death are throughout these ten episodes as well. When is it moral for a country to order an assassination? I found the scenario that the show used to be completely justified, but, well, I'm a Marine. Is the lifestyle of a spy compatible at all with a personal love life? When has an agent gone too far in influencing a target? What should one be prohibited from suggesting?

These larger questions are punctuated with bits of technological whimsy -- I'm no computer geek but I think some of the technology mentioned seems a little far-fetched -- but they at no point detract from the plot, as they are ancillary to the more substantial questions above.

There are also a few digs at the Americans ("Most Americans still think the world on the other side of the oceans is empty save for signs saying 'Here be dragons." -- I took no offense at this, but found it amusing.), interservice rivalry (whew! are things really that bad between 5 and 6?), political usage of the agency, and the role of corporations in influencing policy. But none of these made up the substance of plots, and were really sideshows -- maybe even bones thrown by the writers to their political masters at the BBC.

No, this show is a work of art of the highest quality.

One episode contains a chilling exchange between a suspected terror financier -- who hides beneath three-piece suits, flawless English, and legitimate businesses -- and a female agent sent to investigate his motives:

TARGET: [sipping cognac] "American rubbish."

AGENT: "You don't like Americans?"

TARGET: "I think no better or worse of them than of anyone else. I did enjoy watching the planes flying into the Twin Towers."

AGENT: "It certainly made the pulse . . . beat a little faster."

TARGET: "Umm."

AGENT: "The people jumping . . . was awful though."

TARGET: "Can't you imagine the excitement of those young men who had taken over the planes? To do something so . . . devastating, so spectacular . . . "

AGENT: "It almost sounds as though you . . . support Al Qaeda."

TARGET: "No . . . I'm not interested in their ideology. They're a business as well as a terrorist organization."

AGENT: "But they could do something here or back in London that would kill everyone."

TARGET: "Why be so frightened of death, Sophie? Couple kissing down in the lobby. Boy who brought us the drinks. Who would really care if they all vanished tomorrow?"

AGENT: "Well, their families, the people that love them . . ."

TARGET: "Compare their trivial lives to those men who rushed to their deaths on that beautiful morning in New York."

AGENT: "Is that what you enjoy then? Death and destroying people?"

TARGET: "Enjoy? No, not really. But if you don't like death and destruction, I suggest you look away for the next thirty years, because it's inevitable. And millions will perish."

AGENT: "You know, you make money from people who deal in death and destruction. I'm not sure I entirely approve of you."

TARGET: "But there is a part of you that agrees with me, I'm sure."

AGENT: "What makes you think that?"

TARGET: "You're clever. You're a bit lonely. I imagine you've never been able to keep a lover, but you pretend that's through choice. One thing puzzles me though. That lost child at the station.

AGENT: "What about it?"

TARGET: "I saw your face. It wasn't the Sophie Newman who screams at cloakroom attendants.

AGENT: "How do you know about that? . . . [recovers her bearing] I've always had a soft spot for children. That other bitch happened to lose a particularly beautiful scarf of mine."

TARGET: "Shall I have her killed?"

AGENT: "What?"

TARGET: "The girl in the cloakroom? Hmm? Come on, Sophie! I thought it was your mission in life not to be bored. Let's see if she's working tonight.

AGENT: "Let's just . . .sit down."

TARGET: "One call to the casino, and one of my men can follow her to her house, kill her, and everybody in it."

AGENT: "Stop it."

TARGET: "Come on, Sophie, you don't find this boring do you? We can listen to her screaming." [Speaks a few sentences in Turkish into his phone] Good. She's working. So how much pain does she deserve for losing your scarf?"

AGENT: "Stop it."

TARGET: [Looks at her, then hangs up phone] "One person. A million people. You or me. It changes nothing in the end. Life is only a dream. And one day, we all wake up from it."

AGENT: "I'd like to believe that when people wake up from it they'll see a kinder face than yours."

TARGET: "Good night, Sophie."

I found this exchange to be very compelling because the message was not only delivered by a silver-tongued businessman, speaking to an attractive woman in a $500-a-night hotel suite, but also because its content is not one of Islam, Allah, paradise or fascism. It is only the most cynical nihilism. What a telling scene. For all of our rightful stereotypes of poor Arabs shouting in the streets and brandishing AK-47s, here is another side of Al Qaeda equally dangerous: megalothymia wed only to violent thrill-seeking. Might this derivation of "Islamic" terror be a growiing constituency of Eurabia in the future? I hope not, but suspect so.

Lest you think that this is the only impression of terrorists that is given, I have to contrast the above depiction of terror's nihilistic side with the portrayal of an influential imam in a London mosque in an episode from Season 2. The imam gives this homily to six would-be suicide bombers in one scene:

"What is it to wear 150 pound American training shoes? To put on jackets with a label from Milan in Italy? What is it to drink alcohol? To go clubbing, and end up fumbling a slut of an English girl in the park at dawn, your mind wrecked with pills? It is nothing but ash in the mouth, the taste of the death of the soul. For the west sells you the illusion of an earthly paradise. This is how the American Jews on Wall Street make their money. But despite all the pressures of the West, gaudy promises in your schools, on the television, the way your British friends behave, you've kept yourselves pure. You've become the West's worst fear: young people they cannot sell to, young people they cannot touch. You know the way to true paradise: through a martyr's death." [ALL, shouting] "Death to America and her allies! Death to the unbelievers! Death to the West!"

That episode aired at least a few months before the bus and train bombings in London. Like I said, MI-5 does not shy from asking the difficult questions inherent in strategy, or offending where necessary to ask those questions. If you aren't watching MI-5, why not? I recommend starting with Season 1.

Posted by Chester at February 21, 2006 9:42 PM

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Comments

Posted by: Merv Benson at February 22, 2006 10:50 AM

Posted by: Chester at February 22, 2006 1:03 PM

Posted by: MAJ C at February 23, 2006 3:06 PM

Posted by: Mikey at February 24, 2006 2:47 PM

Posted by: JimM at February 24, 2006 8:37 PM

Posted by: Chester at February 24, 2006 9:09 PM