Sir Harry shone in Spooks' big screen outing

In some respects Spooks is a pretty odd choice to get the 'big screen treatment'. Don't get me wrong, I loved the TV show. It's just that I always imagined that for a series to make the transition from the smaller screen it'd need to contain most of the elements - and characters - that make it a popular programme.

Yet Spooks ended in 2011 so doesn't have a current 'following' and has always prided itself on being a show that bumps off its big name stars in a regular and ruthless fashion ever since 'that moment' with the chip fryer in series one.

In fact 'ruthless' is a pretty accurate picture of where we were at when the show ended - with the much loved stalwart Ruth Evershed meeting her demise to break the heart of Sir Harry Pearce.

So, having been taken off television and without a band of established characters to explore further, why make a film? Still, bizarre and illogical as the timing might have been, Spooks: The Greater Good worked.

Yes, this was just, in essence, an extended TV episode and, yes, it might've meant less if you hadn't got a deep affinity for Sir Harry's character, but this was a film that captured what was greart about the show at its height. Those strengths being good, pacy character-driven storytelling, regular deaths of big name stars to keep you on your toes and truck loads of tension.

If anything, the lack of too many established characters probably helped make this a film that could be enjoyed by someone with no knowledge of the TV programme. It also left open a berth for a main star which was ably filled by Kit Harington. The Game of Thrones actor brought a necessary wider appeal to the film and filled the posters in a way that Peter Firth might have struggled to do.

Harington and Firth hit it off pretty well as a duo too, both conveying characters with a rich, dark past that added to their mystique. Harington provided the action and Firth, playing a rogue, wrongly-accused Pearce, provided subterfuge and bastardry (with a splash of humanity) that makes his one of my all-time favourite TV characters. Firth's performance ensured the many layers he built up over years on TV were brought out before the cinema audience. He surely deserves another outing?

It all looked great on the screen with the odd explosion thrown in to keep the pace up but, as ever with Spooks, this was more about the substance than the style. It doesn't try to take on Bourne and Bond, but nor should it. There's more than one way to skin a spy story and this was no worse for not having more chase sequences or pyrotechnics.

Elyes Gabel played a believable and not-one-dimensional Adam Qasim, the dangerous on-the-run terrorist who escapes from the clutches of MI5 to set up the plot. Tim McInnerny's Oliver Mace perhaps strayed a little too into the stereotypical bracket, as did David Harewood's Warrender, while Jennifer Ehle had a guessable-but-still-enjoyable ending.

Still a few poorly fleshed out characters aside (more than made up for in my book by the return of Malcolm) this was a strong return for Spooks. It'll be interesting to see what, if anything, comes next for Sir Harry and co. More along these lines would certainly be for the 'greater good'...