Sigh.....

[SweetTea]

Fellow Yank here, and honestly I've not found anything remotely like Spooks to enjoy. I've seen some people say that NCIS is probably the closest thing on American TV right now, but I don't watch it so I don't know. I have recently acquired several of the Spooks DVDs, so I do plan to go back and watch the episodes with the commentaries to hear what they have to say as I love all that behind the scenes stuff.

I've searched out other British shows that include the actors from Spooks that I've enjoyed. For instance, I kept reading all about Ashes to Ashes (A2A), starring Keeley Hawes (Zoe) so I got my hands on both series of Life on Mars, of which A2A is sort of a sequel and watched that. Loved the show, and now all 3 series of A2A should be arriving at my house in the next day or so. The show also stars Philip Glenister, the younger brother of Robert Glenister, aka Nicholas Blake. The bad part about A2A is that it's not been released in a Region 1 format, meaning if you get your hands on it you'll need a region-free DVD player or you'll need to hack yours and change it to region free (this is what i did so i could buy Spooks DVDs rather than MI5 - and yes i do know that i'm a bit crazy.) Other stuff I've gotten into includes:

> Hustle (Robert Glenister stars, though it took me several eps before I could watch him without laughing and thinking of Nicholas Blake.) Story of 5 con artists who target those who deserve to be taken down a peg or two.
> Being Human (The BBC version, not the SyFy version.) Nicola Walker guest starred in a series 3 episode, so I thought I'd check it out and I quite like it. Story of a ghost, vampire, and werewolf living as roommates.
> Whitechapel - Rupert Penry-Jones stars as DI Chandler investigating copycat murders of Jack the Ripper in modern time. I've only seen the first series but plan to watch the next ones as time permits.
> Merlin - SyFy channel just finished airing Series 4. A few of our Spooks show up in guest roles, including Miranda Raison (Jo), Gemma Jones (Connie), and Lindsay Duncan (Angela Wells). Anthony Head (Peter Salter from Series 1) is one of the main characters. If you are looking for historically accurate Arthurian legend, this is not the show to watch, from what I've read, but I started watching with no expectations and rather enjoyed it.
> Kingdom (available on-line) stars Stephen Fry as Peter Kingdom, a small town solicitor with Hermione Norris playing Beatrice, his sister. Not a comedy but not a hard hitting drama either. HN's character is quite different from Ros, but there are flashes of that same 'cross me and live to regret it' personality trait.
> Cold Feet stars Hermione Norris where she plays a married mom quite different from Ros but still with that same trait mentioned above. The show is about 3 couples who become friends and their trials and tribulations. I saw someone compare it to 'Friends' but it's not quite the same.
> Doc Martin is about a doctor who develops a blood phobia and has to retrain as a GP and moves to a small coastal village. He's highly intelligent but lacks social skills and is a true fish out of water. A few of the DM regulars did guest spots on Spooks, such as Ian McNiece who was the judge at Zoe's trial and Selina Cadell who was a finance minister in 7.5. I think this show is hilarious as Doc Martin says all those things we'd love to but are too nice to.
> The IT Crowd is a comedy about 2 IT techs and their manager who can barely send emails. Stars Chris O'Dowd and is very funny.
> Touching Evil stars Nicola Walker as DI Susan Taylor and is from the late 90's.
> The Vicar of Dibley is a very funny comedy about a woman assigned to be the vicar in a very small town. The final two episodes include Richard Armitage and Keeley Hawes as brother and sister.

If you go to IMDB you can look up the actors and see what they've been in and what looks interesting. I've borrowed most of this stuff from the library to watch as I don't have NetFlix. Luckily almost all the libraries in MN are networked so I have access to all of those collections rather than just what my local system has.

Spooks set the bar very high, so I have to try and not measure everything against it. Sorry this got so long.