[spoilers] Too many deaths?

[lwhite53]

An interesting dilemma -- do you continue doing what it was that initially garnered interest in the show (starting with Helen's ghastly introduction to a deep fat fryer in 1.2) or do you ease off and let your audience catch a few breaths?

IMO, if you want to keep the show true to its intent, you go with the first. Killing off main characters has become spooks identifying motif, it's tag line, if you will. Change that and you change the show. Once Matthew, Keeley and David left and spooks made the successful transition from a character-based series to an ensemble-based series, all characters became expendable, in the right circumstances.

And from a mundane perspective, when actors want to move on they do have to be written out somehow. Too many Malcolm's retiring off to the seaside would ring rather hollow, I think. BTW, in the dvd extras for series 3, David talks about the way his character was dispatched -- he loved it!