Two of British television’s heavyweights now go head to head at 9pm every Sunday night: ITV’s popular period drama Downton Abbey, and the BBC’s perennial espionage thriller Spooks. Now in its tenth series, Spooks is still broadly reflecting contemporary British politics and foreign relations, with a dash of style and intrigue. So what’s new in the shadowy world of Section D?

Since the death of traitor Lucas North (Richard Armitage) in the previous series, gruff section head Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) is facing a tribunal for improper conduct when he is temporarily reinstated to the office chair where he has spent so many hours brooding over threats to national security.

At his side is trusty Ruth Evershed (Nicola Walker) who presents a welcome air of continuity for long-time viewers, in an office almost entirely staffed by newbies. This is no surprise: Spooks suffers somewhat from being a revolving door for British actors in their late-twenties and mid-thirties, demanding they deliver dialogue in a breathy undertone while triangulating the point of origin of a mobile phone signal or pistol-whipping a terrorist.

Speaking of breathy undertones, new girl Erin Watts (Lara Pulver) looks a little too fresh-from-the-manicurists compared with her rough-and-ready predecessors. Alongside her is wise-cracking Calum Reed (Geoffrey Streatfeild), who annoys more than he entertains. Also on the grid are Dimitri Levendis (Max Brown) and Tariq Masood (Shazad Latif), struggling to have the same impact as their incarnations in previous series.

And what, I hear you ask, is the over-arching and meticulously detailed plot, without which any Spooks series would be naught? With the special relationship rapidly cooling, the British government is turning towards Moscow to create a new bilateral partnership, reigniting Harry’s suspicions of his old Cold War adversaries.

One of them, ex-KGB operative turned Russian cabinet minister Ilya Gavrik (Jonathan Hyde) is in London with his glamorous wife Elena (Alice Krige, who might be recognisable as the Borg queen from Star Trek). Harry must temper his distrust of Ilya to protect him from an assassination attempt, while trying not to let on about his past escapades with Elena – which, by the way, provide a twist ending that you’ll spot a mile off.

The writing remains sharp, but is unevenly distributed – Harry, Ruth and Elena get the best lines, while Ilya compensates by injecting a little bit of Dracula in his Slavic intonation. By contrast, the younger actors have little with which to distinguish themselves.

Hopefully they will have the opportunity in the coming episodes; however, I doubt they will get quite the same scripting as Elena, who discusses the finer points of her champagne cocktail while her life is imperilled.