Lucas North Faces His Torturer on Spooks

For lucky TV viewers in the UK, Spooks season 8 has already begun airing. And the latest episode - 4 - focuses on Lucas North's literal torturous past.

For viewers in North America, where Spooks season 8 won't be airing for awhile yet, try this link on You Tube.



















In this episode, Lucas (Richard Armitage) faces down the man who was his torturer for four of the eight years he survived in a Russian prison.

















Truly the stuff of both nightmares and fantasies, to once again stand before someone who tortured you would take 'mindblowing experience' and totally redefine it.

Torture scenes in films and television put me in a cold sweat. I feel physically sick when I sense one is coming in the story, and sitting through one is an ordeal.

If it's real news footage, like the scene in the Vancouver airport of Robert Dziekański's last excruciating moments after being Tasered by RCMP officers - I can't watch and I have to put my hands over my ears. I can't stand the screaming.

The handling of the Lucas North torture storyline on Spooks thoroughly examines the post-traumatic effects this has on the remainder of that person's life. Lucas is shown as being unable to sleep unless he returns to the hard floor, unable to prevent unrelated stimuli from provoking break-through memories from surfacing, and struggling to prove to his MI-5 superiors that he doesn't retain any Stockholm Syndrome feelings towards his former Russian captors.























CLICK HERE to watch a clip from Spooks season 7 featuring our first glimpse into Lucas' torture memories. WARNING: contains waterboarding footage.

The Silver Chair

Today on my bus ride home from work, I found myself dreaming of The Silver Chair.

After The Horse and His Boy, it's my favorite of the Chronicles of Narnia. And if all goes well, it will be the fourth of the film adaptations of that series.


Of course, in my dreams Prince Rilian and his enchanted persona, the Black Knight would be played by Richard Armitage.








What say you?

ZOS - Zone of Separation

As we head towards Remembrance Day, I'd like to mention a Canadian series we just started watching on The Movie Network.























ZOS follows 'the absurdist reality of living in a violent Zone of Separation, as well as the real costs to the peacekeepers dropped in to police it.'

A Canadian production, this series features top Canadian talent as well as featuring an international cast in the spirit of United Nations peacekeeping.

Canadians Enrico Colantoni
Lolita Davidovich
Nick Mancuso
and Nicholas Campbell

join Irish Colm Meaney
and Slovenian Larissa Drekonja
plus many Canadian actors born in other countries such as Portugal, Latvia and the actual setting for the series, the former Yugoslavia.

This is an extremely gritty series with copious amounts of swearing, blown-off body parts in living colour as well as frank depictions of battle zone prostitution and drug dealing.

It paints a transparent picture of the lunacy faced by so many Canadian peacekeepers who served in Bosnia, only to return home suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was a combination of exposure to gruesome combat conditions as well as the frustrations of trying to serve a mission with contradictory goals and chains of command.

For anyone familiar with the story of Romeo Dallaire and his doomed Rwandan peacekeeping mission, the warning signs of what was to come are woven eerily throughout this series.

Spartacus Ballet

For today's Through the Opera Glasses, here are two scenes from Spartacus, performed by the Bolshoi Ballet.

This is part of the lead-up to Thursday's Blogblast For Peace event.

Spartacus tells the story of a Roman slave who leads an uprising against the empire. In the first scene, a duel between a consul and Spartacus results in a show of mercy for one who has never shown mercy to others.

The following scene shows how wounded pride can fuel not only personal vendettas, but often lead to full-scale war.