Wikipedia: Series 8 Airs on 13th October!

[almh]

That's a good point - it is quite irritating. Watching a series isn't the same if you miss out the one before it. I only watched Spooks during series 7, but my mum only had the boxset of series 1 so I watched that and it was quite surreal as events such as Adam's death and Jo's rape were shown, and I didn't really understand the whole story behind it from not watching the other episodes. Added to that that there is minimal character overlap between series 1 and 7, and it sort of felt like two different tv shows, so quite bizarre.