You’ve got to hand it to the people involved in Russian intelligence. Given the one we met in tonight’s Spooks I’m now convinced they spend their time playing in string quartets to relax, chewing over reviews in the Times Literary Supplement and doing crosswords in Mandarin. This, at any rate, was the impression given by Lucas, who’d spent four years being interrogated by Oleg, only to find that Oleg was now in London, and wanted to meet him at the White Cube — presumably wanting to check out the capital’s art scene while he got on with a spot of espionage.

All well so far, and the references to Trollope and Dickens further cemented Oleg’s cultural gravitas. But I got the sense Oleg knew his 19th century literature more than he knew Lucas. Mention was made to the fact that Oleg knew the inside of Lucas’s head inside out, but there seemed little evidence of this penetrating insight, or sense from Lucas of what it felt like to be confronted once again by his tormentor. Whether that was how David Farr wrote things, or a function of a script development process that emphasised moving the story forward at the expense of character insight, I obviously can’t say.

As torturers go, Oleg wasn’t a match for young David Platt on Coronation Street, but to be fair we weren’t seeing that side of his character. Instead, he’s in London to warn MI5 of a plot to…well, blow stuff up is what it amounts to. He reckons he’s got inside info — for a price. But will the Brits pay up?

Something failed to convince about this episode, and ditto the last Spooks I caught. Which is a shame. At its best, Spooks has brought intelligent drama about world issues to a mainstream audience that might otherwise shy away from issues of geopolitics. And it’s done so by combining that gravitas with characters you can root for and a good bit of whizzbang action. This time out — I’m not so sure. The whole business of Oleg and Lucas being in contact seemed unnecessarily protracted to take in a false start: I felt shortchanged of story, unusual for a series in which I’ve sometimes had to strain to keep up with the amount of story information.

Lucas, incidentally, sports the kind of Russian prison tattooes that have cropped up in the media a few times of late, for instance in Croneberg’s Eastern Promises, and in magazine supplements I’ve chanced on. Never mind the significance though — what really matters is that it’s eye candy, as is Lucas’s American lover, who is seen topless. Something to please everyone I guess, and another sign that Spooks is changing by getting all sexed up.

At least the series is looking for ways to stay topical. The previous episode featured a gang of anti-capitalist cyberterrorists, tapping into concerns about international banking and using the internet as a plot device in interesting ways: the public, or at any rate those not watching kittens tumble round spindryers on YouTube, got to vote on which of the assembled billionaires they had captured would be executed. Not a bad idea, come to think: it might give the likes of Jedward something to think about if the stakes of losing X Factor were more lasting than 15 minutes of fame.