The first recording today starts with the end of Oz and James’s Big Wine Adventure.
There’s a trail for After You’ve Gone Christmas Special.
There’s also a trail for Heston Blumenthal’s Perfect Christmas.
Talking of whom, the next programme is Heston Blumenthal: In Search of Perfection – Trifle.
Heston stands on a street corner and is surprised that nobody wants to try tasting a bit of trifle. “No. She wasn’t having any of it. Must be my charm.” He says as the woman who just walked past turns to give him a funny look.
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He’s a bit sniffy about Birds Trifle.
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He goes to Jerez in Spain, the home of Sherry.
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He milks a cow into a bowl of cider to make a syllabub.
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He takes part in a taste experiment.
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“Now we’re going to clean your tongue.” “With what?” “Using this tampon. It’s the most absorbent thing around.” “I’ve got to put that in my mouth?” “Yes, of course. Then I’ll dry it off.”
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Media Centre Description: Culinary alchemist Heston Blumenthal makes his version of the common English trifle. Unimpressed by the ‘Birds trifle kit in a box’, Heston goes to meet food historian Ivan Day. Together, they milk a cow into a bucket of cider in an attempt to recreate the trifles of yore. A trip to Spain secures the perfect sherry, and gives Heston the idea to use olives. Food scientist Jon Prinz uses his lab and a tampon to teach Heston what makes custard creamy and Heston makes his own hundreds and thousands.
Recorded from BBC TWO on Tuesday 18th December 2007 20:28
BBC Genome: BBC TWO Tuesday 18th December 2007 20:30
I’ve no idea why they’re calling him Dave Cameron here since nobody calls him that.
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There’s a trail for Hard Christmas.
Then the recording stops with a couple of minutes of Earth: The Power of the Planet.
The next recording starts with the end of an episode of Oliver Twist.
There’s a trail for the Strictly Come Dancing Grand Final.
Then, the final episode in this series of Spooks.
The episode opens in a girls’ school in Gaza. I’m sure nothing bad could happen here.
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No of course not. In another chilling echo from our present, the school is bombed. A news report sets the scene. “Up to 66 people, predominantly girls under the age of ten, have been killed in an air strike by Israeli fighter jets on the Gaza Strip this morning. Israel has expressed its deep regret for civilian casualties, but emphasised that the real targets of its raid were planning attacks on settlements in Israel.”
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The former Iranian consul, Dariush Bakhshi, contacts Harry. “As this is a goodbye more than an au revoir, I thought I should warn you that it may not be Israel who pays the price for the attack. Whoever does pay, will reap a bitter harvest.” “Noted.” “I hope so. I have happy memories of London.” Harry interprets this as a warning that London might the target of a terror attack.
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Elsewhere, a black van is watching a posh school.
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In Pakistan a body has been found, dumped, wrapped in the Union flag. It’s suspected to be Zaf’s body, although an autopsy is needed to confirm it. Adam tells Jo. She says “I want to see the pictures.” “You don’t.” “I want to see them.” “If it turns out to be Zaf you’ll remember those photos for the rest of your life. They’ll be in the corner of your room every night before you go to sleep. Let me deal with this. You don’t want to see them.”
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Adam meets with Hogan, the CIA man. He tells him that Zaf was taken by a group called the Redbacks, mercenaries who specialise in taking intelligence officers, and torturing them for information. Cut to two shady men watching video of a torture. “At least the British officer lasted longer than this guy. The final outcome is always the same though – they break, they die.” Then they look at a photo of their next target. A photo of Jo.
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Malcolm has decoded a message which was encoded in a CD of Beethoven. It’s from the Venezuelan government. Harry meets with them. “My name is Fernando Torres. I am the Venezuelan Secretary for Cultural Affairs.” “Of course you are.” Harry’s not being very polite with this one. He says they believe that the Americans are planning to assassinate the Venezuelan President while he’s on a visit to Britain. He gives Harry a file on the assassin. In return for the capture of the assassin, he’ll give Harry information about a terror attack in revenge for the Gaza atrocity. An attack on a British School. “You give us the assassin, and I will get you the intelligence you need to help you save the lives of your children.”
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Now Harry meets with Hogan. “I know the Venezuelan regime is a thorn in your side, but you can’t do this here.” “You did a deal with the Iranians behind our backs – made us look stupid. They’re really pissed, Harry.” “I have known happier times in the special relationship.” “You’ll be pleased to know it’s a decision I’ve had nothing to do with. I’m out of the loop. Guilt by association, I’m afraid.” “Sorry to hear that. What are you going to do?” “Going freelance, might take a tour of Baghdad while there’s still something left to see.”
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Adam gets a tip about a meeting in a restaurant with the assassin. They give Ben Kaplan his first real mission now he’s working there. He’s doing OK to start with, but when his target leaves the restaurant, Adam tells him not to follow, but he does, and the target spots him.
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Harry tells Adam that the body in Pakistan was definitely Zaf.
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Jo doesn’t take the news well. “Come to read me the lecture about the greater good?” “No.” “It’s pretty convenient for you though, isn’t it? Lets you just bail out when the going gets tough and abandon your officers to their fate.” “I didn’t…” “We left Zaf to die, in fear and agony. And you left me on my own. Remember that?”
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Adam goes back to Hogan. Hogan tells him that the Redbacks are back and going after another agent. Adam asks him to help.
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The Redbacks are watching Jo’s house. There’s a tense moment when she’s walking to her front door, and someone gets out of a car to follow her. She drops her keys. Her follower picks them up… It’s Malcolm. They chit chat about whether Jo should go to her college reunion tonight.
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Later, Jo’s friends come to persuade her to go to the party. As she’s talking to them, a creepy man breaks in through her back door.
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Adam is very upset to hear that Jo has been taken. “We’ve got hours to find her otherwise she’s lost.” “We also have a school under threat, and some Carlos the Jackal wannabe on the loose.” “Every time, we offer our people up as a sacrifice. Well, not this time, Harry. Not this time!” Adam suggests they use Hogan. “He has a link to them. He can do a deal without them knowing it’s us behind it. We put a tracker on the money, we go in, we take these bastards out.”
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Ben has a new mission – to find the assassin in the most likely building he’d be using. He’s discovered that the assassin has a cat allergy, so Malcolm gives him a spray. “There’s about 50 moggies condensed into this. Just spray it on.”
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He’s under cover as a health and safety officer, asking the cleaning staff if they’ve been getting their mandated work breaks. He talks to Rodriguez, the assassin, and as he’s walking away, Rodriguez sneezes. “Bless you” says Ben.
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Adam and Hogan are waiting for the Redbacks to pick up their payoff, which has trackers on the money. But Hogan pulls a gun and tells Adam to remove the tracker and give it to him. “You’re working with them?” “When you go freelance it’s to the highest bidder. Nothing personal, just the marketplace. The girl was worth something but much more as bait for you. So here we are, not just Adam Carter, but Adam Carter with a big briefcase of money, which will bolster my fee considerably.”
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Rodriguez is setting up his rifle, and, amusingly, having trouble with streaming eyes. So he’s a little distracted when Ben enters with two other agents, who shoot him with a dart.
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Harry has an impossible choice. Adam and Jo are being held by professional torturers. They could do a deal with Hogan, but the Americans won’t allow it because MI5 have their assassin. If they give him to the Americans, they can do a deal, but then the Venezuelans won’t give them the information about the attack on the school. “We get our officers back and there’s a Beslan-type siege which ends with scores of dead children? Who was it who said that thing about God not playing dice with the universe?” “Einstein.” “He was wrong. I don’t know what to do this time.” Once again, despite Adam being so down on him earlier, Ben has an idea. “We work out what all the players want. Then we load the dice in our favour.” “How?” “You’re right that somebody has to die. We must make it somebody we don’t care about.”
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Harry meets with Hogan, with Torres, from Venezuela present. He breaks the news that they can’t give the assassin back to the Americans. “None of you can have him. Rodriguez is dead. He died this morning from head injuries sustained in his struggle with my officer. We will return the body as soon as we’ve completed our own autopsy.” “Then we’ve got no deal. See you around, Harry.” “Wait! Whilst I’m sorry for the death of your agent, I feel I must point out that we are less than happy that he, with your approval, was intending to kill this man’s President on our soil. We can however make the CIA an offer, which we hope will more than make up for his death.” “I’m listening.”
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Adam and Jo are put in the same room. It’s heavily implied that Jo has already been raped, although it’s not said outright. The torturers play the sounds of Zaf’s interrogation. The creepy one comes in and sneers at Zaf crying for his mother. Jo says “There are men like this one in every war there’s ever been. He’s part of every war that’s being fought around the world right now. It’s just what they do to women they capture. It’s what they do. Like sick, incontinent dogs.”
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When the Americans have gone, Harry beings in the assassin for Torres. “Make it quick and remember, the Americans think he sustained injuries during a struggle.” “No problem. We should play golf some time.”
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Jo talks about her parents. About her father, who used to watch the birds in his garden. “My dad showed me how you have to kill a wounded bird like that.” “Yeah, break its neck, I imagine.” “No. You just sort of hold it quite firmly… and after a while the bird just dies quietly, without any fuss, without pain or further suffering.” Adam doesn’t want to talk about this. “Have you got the water there?” “Lucky for the bird if there’s someone around who knows how to do that.” “Can you pass me the water?” “I won’t be tortured, Adam. They’re going to use electricity, they took me to the room.” “We’re gonna be rescued.” “And then I’ll be passed on to a new group. To be raped and tortured again.” “You have to try and stay…” “Positive? I know my fate, Adam. We know from Zaf what they do. You owe this to me.”
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Back on the Grid, they’ve got the information about which school is going to be attacked. And they’ve offered a deal to the Americans. “Not happy. But we’ve offered them a deal – we give them any captured Al Qaeda from the school attack – we can talk to Hogan.”
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The school attack is averted.
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They get an address for where Jo and Adam are being held. Jo is still begging Adam not to let them torture her. The torturers are getting their torture equipment ready. “Don’t let them take me, Adam. Adam!” “I won’t let them hurt you. I won’t let them hurt you. I won’t let them.”
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A large team of armed men break in to the house. Harry and Ben are there. They find Adam. It’s too late.
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Why do I keep watching this programme when it does this to me? And it’s another example of a show that I swear I have watched, but I retain no memory of most of what happened in this series. I even have a memory of Zaf being discovered alive, which I think must actually have come from a previous series. Either that or I just have a peculiarly specific and localised form of amnesia.
Media Centre Description: Drama series about the British Security Service. War with Iran finally averted, the team learn that a London school will be the target of hardliners resisting the new peace. Simultaneously they discover that their lost colleague, Zaf, was grotesquely tortured and killed by a group of mercenaries. When Jo is snatched by the group, Adam resists calls to stay focused on the school threat; the war has become personal and he must find Jo at all costs.
Recorded from BBC ONE on Tuesday 18th December 2007 20:58
BBC Genome: BBC ONE Tuesday 18th December 2007 21:00
After this, there’s a trail for The Shadow in the North, based on Phillip Pulman’s Sally Lockhart novels, which I enjoyed very much, but which, for some reason, I never archived. Trivia fact – it stars Billie Piper, and co-stars a pre-Doctor Who Matt Smith.
The recording ends with the start of the 10 O’Clock News, which leads with the election of Nick Clegg as leader of the Liberal Democrats. “One thing I can tell you for sure is that I didn’t go into politics for the Liberal Democrats to end up being an annex to a Conservative government.” Ok, then.
The last recording today is the last episode of Earth: The Power of the Planet – Rare Earth.
In this episode Professor Iain Stewart looks at the question of whether there’s life anywhere else in the universe. He talks about a new theory. “It suggests that planets like ours might be very rare. It’s called the rare Earth theory. It says that simple life, like bacteria, the type of slime I’ve seen in hot volcanic pools may be common in the universe. But for complex life, like plants and animals to evolve, requires an extraordinary sequence of events.”
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Events like the collision of a very new Earth with a planet called Theia, which had the same orbit. “This was a vital first step in creating the conditions for complex life. That’s because Earth consumed a part of its twin and became a significantly larger planet. The result was to increase the pull of Earth’s gravity. Without this, Earth’s atmosphere might have gradually leaked into space.”
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He visits Meteor Crater in Arizona.
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He goes meteorite hunting in Australia. They find a small one. “What is amazing is that it actually makes it to the surface at all. Something that size might have been part of an object the size of a washing machine or a small car at the top of the atmosphere. And as it punches into the atmosphere at high speed, the surface gets melted and stripped off, and a new surface exposed and melted and stripped off until you whittle down to something about that big.” “But I mean, it’s heavy. So that small car is a small car of rock weighing tonnes?” “Yes.” “So thin air does this to solid rock?” “Yes.”
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The collision with Theia also resulting in the formation of the Moon, whose tidal effects help regulate the climate. “The moon’s gravitational pull prevents Earth from wobbling in space, which would cause climate chaos. Without the moon, Earth’s temperature would regularly switch from baking hot to way below freezing. Such wild climatic swings would have made the planet uninhabitable.”
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He gets a lift to an observatory from Jerry Wiant, whose project involves shooting a laser at the Moon to measure how far away it is.
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He goes to Mexico, and goes caving in cenotes. These huge, often flooded caves form a curve when viewed from above, and were a clue to one of the greatest catastrophes the planet has ever seen – the impact of the Chicxulub meteor – the one that killed the dinosaurs.
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He visits a team exploring Madagascar’s forests, looking for new species of insect.
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The new species of ant is named after the Professor – Serapakis Iainstewartii (spelling uncertain!).
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His final thoughts of the future. “The Earth will be just fine. That’s not to say that the rapid changes we’re forcing on Earth don’t matter. That’s because humans operate on a different timescale. We’ve evolved to live in the world as it is now. So in changing this world, we’re altering the very environment that has allowed the human race to thrive. We could be creating conditions that threaten the long-term survival of our civilization. So all this stuff about saving planet Earth, well, that’s not the problem. Planet Earth doesn’t need saving. Earth is a great survivor. It’s not the planet we should be worrying about. It’s us.”
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Media Centre Description: Geography series with Dr Iain Stewart. Our planet is unique within our solar system. Four and a half billion years ago, when our planet was first formed, it had a ‘twin’ named Theia. Theia was absorbed into the Earth, increasing its gravity and allowing it to form its atmosphere. Life on earth has only prospered because it is provided with right amount of heat from its sun. It’s not all a geology lesson, though: Iain will be shouting from clifftops and mountains in a variety of exotic locales.
Recorded from BBC TWO on Tuesday 18th December 2007 21:03
BBC Genome: BBC TWO Tuesday 18th December 2007 21:05