SPOOKS: CODE MINUS 9

From Kudos Film & Television (Spooks) and American television writer and producer Frank Spotnitz (Strike Back, The X-Files) comes Hunted, which started this thursday on BBC One. The eight-part new espionage/thriller drama is a co-production of Kudos and Spotnitz's Big Light Productions for the BBC and HBO's sibling pay-cable channel Cinemax .

Australian actress Melissa George (The Slap) stars as Sam Hunter, an operative for a private intelligence company called Byzantium (Byzantium!) Left dead after a mission in Morocco sher returns to her employer in London one year later and ask her job back, without knowing who ordered to kill her and who to trust. Particularly as she suspects her lover and colleague Aidan Marsh (Adam Rayner). Her new assignment is to infiltrate the house of a mobster turned property businessman who is currently bidding to acquire a Pakistani billion-pound hydroelectric facility. But a terrifying blank faced assassin is after Sam.

« What did you expect? I'm a spy. »

One year after the final series of Spooks arrives the latest foray of Kudos and BBC One into the world of espionage. For Hunted the indie joins forces with X-Files veteran Frank Spotnitz, the man who morphed Chris Ryan's Strike Back into that brilliant action/adventure buddy movie of the week called Strike Back: Project Dawn for Sky and Cinemax. This Anglo-American co-production is filmed in Morocco, Scotland and London on a budget looking comfortable. Reliable talents like Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Lost), Stephen Dillane (Game of Thrones), Stephen Campbell Moore (Titanic) or Patrick Malahide are amongst the cast.

Except that Hunted is neither Spooks nor even Strike Back: Project Dawn. It's a second-hand Alias (in which Melissa George played Lauren Reed) or La Femme Nikita or any recent U.S. entry in the thriller/spy  genre. The dialogues are terrible and the story has enough cliches to inspire a dozen spoofs to Charlie Brooker. Maybe the one who wanted Sam Hunter dead is a lover of good dramas. Spooks concluded its nine-year run after a couple of unsatisfactory series, Hunted is in advance. Cinemax will premiere the show on Friday, October 19.

http://www.cultbox.co.uk/reviews/episodes/4987-hunted-series-1-episode-1-review
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9587882/Hunted-BBC-One-review.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2012/oct/04/hunted-series-one-episode-one
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/hunted/