[spoilers] Too many deaths?

[lwhite53]

(25-11-2009 04:14 PM)HellsBells Wrote:  I think if you keep killing off people's favourite characters you run the risk of them not watching the show. I know I was tempted not to watch after Tom left. I feel the audience loses it's affinity to the show if the characters get killed off before we have had time to get to know them well.
I read somewhere that MI 5 has not actually lost any female officers at all and therefore Spooks loses some of its realism by continually killing of main characters.

I think the show is more interested in hyper-realism than in creating a truly realistic environment (for instance, real MI5 officers don't carry guns). Situations are magnified and enlarged, time is not linear, coincidences happen more than the standard norm would seem to dictate, action is heightened, inaction is virtually unknown, and people are killed in heroic and horrific ways. All are very effective dramatic devices that define spooks. As I said earlier, without them I think you lose the through-line that makes spooks what it is.