http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/tvandradioblog/2007/oct/16/spookycoincidencewhocares

Is it me or is Spooks unintentionally very funny? I say this as a fan - I'm as entertained by the gung-ho antics of MI5's section D as everyone else. I want to believe in a world where the offices of public servants are full of Apple Macs, mood lighting and uncompromising men and women of action. Unlike so much British drama, it's slickly directed and looks great - and not just when Rupert Penry-Jones wears a Hugo Boss suit.

The sixth series, which starts tonight, will follow one continuous arc, a format familiar from US shows. But if it mimics the devices as well as the glossy production values of a series like 24, Spooks really needs an ideas polish. There are enough signature clichés, lapses in logic and script howlers to make it a kind of action-comedy. For example, why aren't the writers credited on the DVDs? Do they want plausible deniability?

Whatever 24's flaws, it has a certain ruthless efficiency. Spooks' operatives are half superhero, half stumblebum. Among my favourite moments in the last run was when resident hotshot and yes, "loose cannon" Adam Carter (Penry-Jones) took out members of Mossad in a pitch-dark building, left them with their night vision goggles and started blundering around complaining to base control he couldn't see a thing.

In the middle of another security crisis, Carter once barked to his underlings about the urgent need to stay hydrated, and ordered sandwiches. (If Jack Bauer's stomach thinks his throat's been cut, it's probably because it has been.)

A lot of the dialogue suffers from the George Lucas problem: easy to type, harder to say. Recruiting Miranda Raison after a chance meeting posing as a gas man, Carter wooed her to the cause with the immortal line: "Can you think of a funkier way to earn a living?" (That's the service, not reading meters.)

And what about when his archetypal west Londoner went undercover as a Syrian terrorist? It was surely the most unconvincing infiltration of a dangerous Middle Eastern faction since Team America.

At least Spooks offers some great touristy shots of London - it's amazing how many coups are plotted in view of the Gherkin or the London Eye. It's also extraordinary how many swarthy wrongdoers are darn good-looking. Caucasian conspirators are always weaselly, presumably to distinguish them from MI5 as cast by Models 1.

Yet despite its laugh-out-loud qualities, I only ever read about how coolly impressive Spooks is. Dead Ringers spoofed it, but just made fun of the 24-ish split-screen effects. Come on Culshaw et al, it won't send itself up, you know. Well not much, anyway.