Spooks writer Neil Cross goes off The Grid
As the latest explosive series of Spooks comes to an end (the final episode is on Monday at 9.30pm), we caught up with the writer Neil Cross and talked death, offending the Russians and smashing up hotel rooms.
You're well known for killing off the leads and pretty quickly! We can refer to Helen Flynn (played by Lisa Faulkner) unfortunate clash with a deep fat fryer in Series 1 and recently Adam's (played by Rupert Penry-Jones) demise in the car bomb. What's the secret to killing off the leads in such shocking ways without ever losing the impact?
Neil Cross: Those moments are terrifying
and no-body decides them for themselves how to do it. I think
I've probably got the highest hit rate! I think I've killed
more than anybody else! There's one still to be seen in this
series... Well there are two in the series but only one of them is
mine - the final one.
We tend to know who is leaving and who is not, before the series
starts. We had big, big conversations with Rupert Penry-Jones
about how Adam Carter was going to go. It's never just
the caprice of the writer. We just all sit in a room together
and talk about roughly the kind of death we want that character to
have. So for instance, we all decided, unanimously, that for
Adam, it had to be a hero's death involving plenty of
pyrotechnics.
Bizarrely I've never written an episode of Spooks with a bomb in it
before. All of my episodes had avoided bombs. So I
thought well, in this series there have been so many bombs that
stopped one second before it detonated, wouldn't it be great for
the one time that Adam wasn't lucky... So he had this spectacular
heroic death. He died saving lives and died in a halo of
fire.
What we particularly liked as well was the scene after that with the child and how he knew - it was so powerful.
Neil Cross: Oh yeah, I love that. A lot of people wrote to me and cried when they read the script for that. That's one of my favourite little moments, people love that moment. I love that moment.
How has Harry survived for so long?
Neil Cross: He doesn't get out in the field as much as he used to does old Harry - he's mostly at The Grid because he's boss material now. One of the lines from my episode which has been taken up a couple of times since is that Harry (Pearce) is the still point of the turning world in many ways. Peter Firth as Harry Pearce is absolute lynch pin of Spooks. There may be chaos and death and destruction all around him but I think it would be tragic for the series to lose Harry. Nations all over the world would go into mourning..
How much support from the real MI5 do you and the team get? Do you have a spook who keeps you in the loop?
Neil Cross: Yeah, we use KGB, CIA and MI5
advisors. Personally I've never actually made use of them
because I don't trust spies. The information they volunteer
isn't the information I want to hear. I want to hear what
they're not allowed to tell us, what they don't tell us. But
certainly there are security service liaisons and I managed to
insult the KGB liaison last year enormously. It was the
read-through for episode one of this series where the Russians are
the baddies. In the original script there was a quote from
Karl Marx (I can't remember exactly now) but it was about how
Russian psychology and essentially how Russia is a ravenous beast
and it will never be satisfied. And a lot of people attend
the read-throughs and I was sat next to Peter Firth who plays Harry
and behind us were a bunch of people I'd never met. Peter
then read this line about the Russians and I just heard from behind
me go 'this is not true'.
And behind me was the ex-KGB advisor that they used and the weird
thing about him was you've never seen anyone look more like a KGB
advisor in your life! He had a black suit and a black turtle
neck and a very thin face with his hair in a widow's peak swept
back. So I had to spend the rest of the day avoiding
him.
Ros (Hermione Norris) is nothing less than ruthless - but we saw a different side to her after Adam died...
Neil Cross: It's very tough with Ros. Ros is my favourite character to write. Hermione is the most fantastic actor and she does give a fantastic depth to Ros. She does have all the emotions. I have written a few emotional episodes for her including the one where she smashes up the hotel room, which is one of my favourite bits of Spooks ever. She is able to tap into those emotional depths and then return to icy/controlled world which is a fantastic feat for an actor to achieve. But the demands of Spooks are just that we don't have enough time, I think, to explore our characters private lives and depth we explore them exercising their duty. Ros is too busy to be fluffy.
What's been your favourite series to write?
Neil Cross: I've got favourite bits. Most of my favourite bits involve Ros actually. There's one in Series 6 where Ros dies and is poisoned by Juliette and I love Hermione's performance in that episode and I love the death scene in particular. And I loved Ros smashing up the hotel room. Those two bits are probably my favourite moments.
Click here to find out about Burial, the latest novel by Neil Cross.
