Bag and tag

Time for a crime round-up. I was in Borders in Oxford at the weekend, and spotted that Neil Cross (script-writer for the last two seasons of Spooks) has a crime novel out, Burial, which is reviewed over at the It's a Crime blog, here. Spooks is a patchy show. I was huge fan of the first series, with Hugh Laurie guest-starring as Jools Siviter, a portent of what he was capable of delivering in House (congrats, Hugh, on scooping the Screen Actors Guild Award for that role, for the second year running). Then the show went off the boil, in my opinion, during season four and I'd almost given up on it entirely by the time we reached season seven, the latest one. I'm so glad I didn't as it was fantastically good, thanks in no small part to the addition of Richard Armitage to the cast. The writing stopped trying to compete with shows like 24 and played to its strengths as a British TV series. Gemma Jones reprised her role as Connie James, known affectionately in our house as Spy!Gran. Jones had the most amazing scenes of the whole series, and deserves an award for her performance. She also got me thinking about the rumoured remake of The Equalizer (a favourite show of mine from the '80s with Edward Woodward as a vigilante in New York) - if only the show's remakers were brave enough to re-cast the lead role as a woman! Gemma Jones would absolutely storm that part. Warm cardigans, big guns. Not that different to Edward Woodward, really.