We voted Spooks as our favourite show of 2008, mainly because, for the first time I think, it was consistent in its provision of seat-of-your-pants thrills. It really hit its stride, and carried on a gripping storyline all the way to an unbelievable climax. Who can forget Ros having to 'take one for the team', Jo trying to come to terms with everything that had gone on in the previous series, Adam's death and Connie's hissing snake wince at Harry? The good news is that series eight has just started filming. So what nuggets can we glean from the announcement?

For all our news, reviews and Spooks interviews (including a Peter Firth chat), go here.

If you've been reading TV Scoop today - and indeed during the past few weeks - you will have known all about our Top 50 shows of the year. We crowned Spooks as our favourite today, and it was richly deserved too. Series seven has to go down as the best British thriller series ever, and at its heart - as he has been for seven years - is Peter Firth's magnificent portrayal of Harry Pearce. To get his reaction to the placement and to chat about Spooks in general, I managed to have a chat with Peter earlier this week. It was a pleasure; he's a lovely man. What's more he left me on the edge of my seat with a revelation about what may happen in series eight. Read on after the jump!

To have a look at all our Top 50 run-down, go here. To read our Spooks news and reviews, go here.

Did you work it out? There were some clues, but there were also some potentially high-flying TV shows that didn't make our top 50 at all, so it may not have been entirely obvious. But yes, our top slot for 2008 goes to the wonderful, seat-edge, sweat-inducing, nail-biting and ever-twisting Spooks. I started watching this year with trepidation aforethought. After last year's relatively poor (in Spooks terms) series, it could have gone either way. I needn't have worried. Not only was Spooks back on form, it set a new bar. Series eight will have to be bloody good to better this.

For this year's full Top 50 line-up go here. To read all our Spooks news and reviews, go here.

Neil Cross knows a thing or two about ratcheting up the tension, and in the finale of the seventh series of Spooks he used both of them. And then, from somewhere, he found a third thing. And a fourth. After 20 years building Sugarhorse and infiltrating the FSB to the highest levels, Harry and the team discover that the Russians have been at it too. Only their project - codenamed Tiresias - has been going for 25 years. "Trust no-one" has never been truer.

So, here we go then. It's the finale of series seven of Spooks tonight (BBC One, Monday 8 December, 9pm) and it's set to be an absolute corker. In fact, the whole blummin' series has been an absolute cracker and has, I think, really turned a corner in terms of writing, editing and, well, everything. It really is on a par of any US show you can think of (24 included). There's a trailer over the jump, which suggests, as the Russians run amok in London town, the teams turns to an unlikely source for help.

For all our Spooks news and reviews, go here.

As you all know, we here at TV Scoop think that the latest, seventh series of Spooks, which comes to an end on Monday, is easily the best yet. Consequently this means it's one of the best things on television. It's all been going off in this series - Adam and Ben died, Connie was a spy (well, they're all spies but you know what I mean), Jo was lovely and gorgeous but mentally unstable, Ros' cold , icy stare came on in leaps and bounds and new man Lucas slotted in very nicely. And I haven't even mentioned Harry or his goings on. So, just when you thought that Spooks couldn't go an at this pace, you had better think again.

For all our Spooks news, reviews and interviews go here.

What series Spooks is as the moment. All highly implausible stuff, but massively gripping and finally getting everything right. In fact, so right I really do think it now rivals the kind of American counterparts that are always lauded as slick, fast-paced and taut. Spooks has really hit its straps this series. But one thing was bothering me from last night's penultimate episode - what was that weird hissing face Connie pulled when she was captured and confronted by Harry?

For all our Spooks stuff, go here.

With one week remaining to the seventh series of Spooks, I've already concluded this is the best series ever. Last night, with Harry being interrogated, Lucas under pressure in Moscow, the rest of Section D under constant surveillance, and the ineffectual Richard Dolby in charge, the situation looked bleak. But it's always darkest just before the dawn.

Amazing. Even in its seventh series, Spooks is still ratcheting up the tension and the pace with every single episode, last night's being easily the best story of the series so far (as last week's was at that point). Everyone's on high alert as an emergency summit has been called in central London to get the Israelis and the Palestinians talking. Meanwhile Malcolm has spotted a high-tech weapon - a VHI immobiliser - being sold on eBay where it has no business being at all, and Harry receives word from Sugarhorse Asset K that the whole network has been compromised and she's coming to London with intel. Just how much excitement can be packed into a single hour? About this much, probably.

A refreshing change from the usual theme of this series last night, as the team left Al Qaeda in a box under the bed for the week while they tackled a banking crisis artificially engendered by international financier Alexis Meynell, played with deliciously superior menace by Paul Rhys. And in a shocking development, the high-level mole in the Sugarhorse affair was revealed!

Spooks is proving to be top-notch again (very tense and action-packed so far), and tonight's episode dishes up more of the same (BBC One, Monday 10 November, 9pm). When Harry and the team are offered a high-ranking Al Qaeda boss for negotiation, he thinks it's a great idea and the only way to broker peace between the two sides. Trouble is the Americans aren't happy about the idea and neither is the Home Secretary. Cue lots of tense two-ing and fro-ing. Oh, and there's a bomb to disarm too. Trailer's after the jump.

For all our Spooks news, interviews and reviews, go here.

A tense week for Section D as Harry goes off to spend some time in a bookshop (that is not as bookish as it seems), the team monitor a dry run of an Al Qaeda bomb plot (that is not as dry as it seems), and everyone wonders whether the lovely Jo has been blown up or not, and if she hasn't been entirely blown up, will she be horrifically scarred for life by bits of flying policeman, or have lost a limb. Or her mind.

Eight hours have passed since Adam's death and each of the Spooks team is trying to come to terms with it in his or her own way. Being Spooks this means that none of them are sleeping, and a fair number of them are smashing things up. In the special case of Harry Pearce, his need to destroy is very focussed. He wants to "take the Russian operation in Britain, shoot it the through the heart and watch it bleed to death." He wants revenge. He sets off to ask his minister Richard Dolby for permission to target Kachimov directly.

Adam is dead, long live Lucas. Anyone who was still debating whether Adam Carter would indeed be killed off in this opening episode now has their answer, and with a story that never let up its blistering pace from start to finish any debate about whether Spooks could maintain its legendary quality as it drove manically into its seventh series has been put to bed too.

Spooks is back. Quite pleased. Monday 27 October is the date, 9pm is the time and BBC One is the channel. Richard Armitage from the woeful Robin Hood is our new hero, but the thing we really want to know is how Adam leaves the show. We'll find out soon enough, but in the meantime there's a trailer after the jump. The BBC, on its YouTube site, says this: "Drama series about the British Security Service. An Al Qaeda cell kidnap a British soldier and demand that Remembrance Sunday be cancelled as it is an affront to all dead Muslim soldiers. MI5 hunt the cell but when they secure the release of former MI5 officer Lucas North in a secret spy swap, the team realise Al Qaeda have a new sponsor - the emerging super power Russia, and there's a bomb." So Spooks is doing its bit to not fan the flames of the new Cold War, which is nice.

For all our Spooks news and reviews, go here.

I don't normally go in for pant-wetting, but I can tell you that there's definitely some leakage at the thought that series 7 of Spooks is almost upon us. Officially, all the Beeb will say is that episode one will screen sometime during the week beginning Saturday 25 October, but the excellent Ian Wylie lets the cat out of the bag today on his MEN blog, declaring opening night to be Monday. So the above date and time are a bit "E&OE" at the moment, but I think it's a fair bet. I called the end of the last series the best hour of television I've ever watched, but it looks as if the new series is set to top even that.

Here's where you'll find all our Spookiness.

The 94th series of Spooks is almost upon us (the seventh actually) and it looks as though it's going to be a squeaky bum sort of offering. One of the things I really like about the show is that it has never been afraid to kill off key characters, and this time it's the turn of Adam, played by Rupert Penry-Jones. I can feel women up and down the land shrieking as they read that last statement, but it's true. It isn't true to say he gets killed off, but he does leave in this series. There's an interview with RPJ after the jump where he describes his exit as classic Spooks. Rupert, we salute you for your sterling work!

For all our Spooks news and review, go here.

One of the strengths of Spooks is that it's never afraid to re-invent itself, sometimes to the extent of killing off major characters to keep things fresh. Well, with Spooks: Code 9 it certainly looks as though the franchise (it's now a franchise, let's face it) has really tried to re-invent itself by producing a yoof version for BBC Three. But, as I watched the fast-moving series opener (and despite all the flashy camera techniques and paired-down, dystopian view of the future of Britain), it seemed to me it was pretty much a carbon copy of the original, adult version.