We’ve had protocols, ultimatums, even then the odd quantum, but now it’s time to embrace the notion of ‘the greater good’. The Spooks motion picture – Spooks: The Greater Good to give it its full title – gets bundled blindfolded out of an unmarked van and into our cinemas in May and it has a new trailer to share with the world. Click below for some helter-skelter lunchtime fun.
Die-hard Spookies might have given up on seeing a big-screen version of the BBC spy series but here it is, promising all the unsparing character drama and tension that made the show so beloved. It mixes zeitgeisty currency and Spooks heritage with Kit Harington’s Will Holloway and Peter Firth’s Harry Pearce, the old MI5 warhorse, working in concert to stop a terrorist threat. That menace is represented by the magnetic and ruthless Adam Qasim (Elyes Gabel), whose motives are only slightly murkier than those at the top of Thames House and within the British government.
So who can Harry and Will trust in their bid to prevent the escaped Qasim carry out an atrocity in London? Can they even trust each other? Surely they can trust Tuppence Middleton’s MI5 field agent? OR CAN THEY?
As returning director Bharat Nalluri, the man who made the pilot episode back in 2002, points out, it's the idea of finding the best of a lot of very terrible options tht underpins both title and film. “'The greater good’ has been the dilemma for Spooks for the last ten years,” he tells Empire, "and I think that’s what makes it kind of slightly unique as a show, and as a movie as well. Do you kill one person to save a thousand? Should you do that? Does that make you a better person, a worse person? The choices aren’t easy and they’ve never been easy.”
See for yourself when Spooks: The Greater Good gets its UK release on May 8, with Jennifer Ehle, Elyes Gabel, David Harewood and Tim McInnerny also aboard.