A funny thing happened on the way to Hunted's being cancelled by the BBC. The sleek, cool spy thriller featuring Melissa George as a haunted assassin-for-hire working unwittingly for Her Majesty's Government, or HMG for those in the know, became very, very good indeed.
Last week's episode, written by series creator and former X-Files writer-producer Frank Spotnitz, was a master class in high action, with intelligence, craft and moments of real poignancy. it doesn't get much more poignant than an adult woman flashing back to being kidnapped and emotionally battered as a child.
George, originally from Perth, Australia, has an almost uncanny ability to play brains and brawn with equal skill: This just might be the finest, most nuanced high-octane performance by a woman actor this side of Skyfall.
Hunted returns Friday with a badly rattled Sam Hunter (George) convinced that industrialist Jack Turner (Patrick Malahide, seething with the kind of menace that veteran, theatrically trained U.K. stage actors can do in their sleep) is plotting to assassinate a visiting presidential candidate from Pakistan, Fatima Zahir.
Zahir is a moderate and a woman, two qualities that make her a long-shot to gain power in such a turbulent state. Turner is convinced, though, that if elected Zahir will wreck his plans to take over a group of profitable oil and mining concessions on behalf of a shadowy cabal of silent conglomerates.
Sam Hunter draws her pay from a dodgy private security firm called Byzantium. Unknown to her, Byzantium is in bed with HMG, assorted spooks at No. 10 Downing and a spiffy little number known as Military Intelligence Service, Section 6, or MI6 as the plebes call it.
In the kind of plot twist that seems probable only in a TV potboiler, Hunter is working undercover as a nanny to Turner's shy, retiring, 12-year-old grandson.
Naturally, forces are gathering in the darkness. Somebody, somewhere seems hell-bent on shutting her up for good, and she can't look sideways at the boy without seeing herself as a terrified child being bundled into a car, after seeing her mother murdered before her eyes, to be shackled and terrorized in an abandoned farmhouse on a country estate in the middle of some godforsaken nowhere.
Hunted started out as a better-than-average TV thriller and has morphed over time to become one of TV's most consistently entertaining, high-class spy dramas.
Friday's episode is the third from the end of the season. Just days ago it looked as if the season finale would be a series finale, but it hasn't worked out that way.
BBC cancelled Hunted — no reason given — but earlier this week Cinemax, BBC's U.S. partner in the series, decided to continue with a spinoff, focusing on George's character.
Cinemax is owned by the premium pay-TV service HBO — Hunted airs here on HBO Canada — and it now looks as if Hunted will beat the odds. It's rare that an officially cancelled series is given a second chance, and rarer still that the second chance comes so quickly.
Why did BBC cancel Hunted? Who knows. BBC has other issues on its plate at the moment. What matters is that a cool, sleek thriller with important things to say about outsourced conflict, corporate espionage and dirty tricks that don't always involve sexy times, purloined emails and biographers who get too close to their subject, has been given a second lease on life.
Hunted is that TV rarity — a spy drama that promised a lot in the beginning, and then delivered more over time. (HBO, Friday, 11 ET/MT, 10 PT)
Three to See
• You can so judge a TV show by its cover sometimes, or if not its cover, the title. It's a SpongeBob Christmas! is inspired by SpongeBob voice actor Tom Kenny's song "Don't Be a Jerk (It's Christmas)," and there are no surprises here. The story follows Plankton's efforts to get his mitts on The Krusty Krab's secret Krabby Patty formula by using special jerktonium-laced fruitcake to turn the residents of Bikini Bottom into jerks, thus fulfilling his fondest Christmas wish. Yes, there's a happy ending. Look, it's SpongeBob. You were expecting, like, South Park? (YTV, CBS, Friday, 9:30 ET/PT)
• Jackie Vernon lends his pipes to the Christmas classic Frosty the Snowman, about the "jolly, happy soul" brought to life thanks to the powers of a magical hat. The 1969 animated special is followed in short order by the followup Frosty Returns, featuring the voices of John Goodman, Andrea Martin and the late, great Jonathan Winters. Yes, you're quite right to be troubled by all this Christmas fare so early in the season. Then again, only a Grinch would point out that it's not December yet. (CBS, Friday, 8 ET/PT)
• Leave it to CBC to cast a pall over the occasion, or provide some much-needed perspective, depending on your political leanings and/or TV tastes. The Fifth Estate takes a new, closer look at the sorry saga of Lance Armstrong, international cycling's too-close-for-comfort relationship with doping in general and how Armstrong managed to keep his secret for so long. Perhaps Pentagon generals could've taken a cue from all this, but that's a Fifth Estate for another week. (CBC, Friday, 9 ET/PT)
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