MI-5 (TV Series) The Message (2006) User Reviews

The Message

[Prismark10 · 5/10 · 26 February 2021]

This looks like a complicated way to write out Ruth Evershed from the series.

Ruth helps to give change to a person at a tube station. The man then throws himself into the path of a train.

He was the head of security in a detention centre, where seven suspected terrorists died in an accidental fire.

The report on the accident is a whitewash with Joint Intelligence chief Oliver Mace behind it. The Spooks team find a conspiracy regarding torture at the heart of the government.

Oliver Mace invites Harry Pearce into a close circle, where torture is sanctioned.

This is a topsy turvy episode which does lapse into silliness at times.

It does want to make barbed criticisms at the then government and spy chiefs. There is mention of The Hutton Report, which blamed the BBC media reaction on their report of Tony Blair's dodgy dossier.

Ruth is gone too

[Johnny_West · 5/10 · 10 August 2022]

Ruth (Nicola Walker) is an interesting character, but over the past couple of years she has identified as a spinster cat lady, and she always walks around like a little mouse and has a witchy face to go with that.

After numerous conspiracy theories from Ruth, and various times she has dodged the rules to do whatever she wants, Ruth gets set up for the murder of a private prison security firm manager. Thanks to Ruth's personal attempts to get information by burglarizing a home and following the victim around right before he died, all the CCTV videos of Ruth incriminate her as the killer.

In all fairness to Ruth, it seems like everyone at MI-5 does as they want, and the rules are more like suggestions at MI-5. As usual, Harry is in the middle of it all, fighting for power with Maise and other members of "the circle." The circle is a shadow government that wants to control all of the UK. Harry and others are often fighting its attempts at more power. Now Harry thinks they set up Ruth to get back at him.

In what has to be the lamest romance in the history of TV, Ruth and Harry are sort of "in-like" of each other, but Harry is afraid to make a move, since Ruth is his subordinate. Ruth just looks at him, but she does not seem to have any passion. So they never get any further than one dinner.

At the end, when Harry wants to tell Ruth how he feels before she goes, she tells him no. Ruth prefers to imagine a romance, rather than hear Harry express his feelings and ruin it for sure. Seems like very little was there at all.

The sad part is that Colin has not been replaced, and nobody seems to miss his skills at all, in spite of all the tech issues that are present in every story. Colin was a solid member of the team, yet he quickly went from indispensible to forgotten.