Intended for Mature Audiences

Last year I mentioned (scroll down to the last few paragraphs of that post) that the British spy show Spooks (known in this country as MI-5) was airing on Boston PBS station WGBH. I watched the first four seasons several years back when they aired on A&E, and five more have aired in the UK since that time. (Season 9 aired in the fall of 2010, and the BBC has announced a tenth season for later this year.)

I wanted to get back into the show but since it had been four years, I thought it would be a good idea to watch those episodes again (I remembered that season 4 ended with a cliffhanger). Additionally, WGBH was promising to show the complete, full-length episodes as they had aired in the UK (the A&E broadcasts had been edited to allow for commercials), so I started recording them.

Because of WGBH's inconsistent scheduling (the show would disappear off the schedule for a month at a time during fundraising periods), I soon grew frustrated and switched to Netflix, which has most episodes of the show available for streaming. For whatever obscure reason that likely has something to do with international rights, seasons 5 and 8 are available from Netflix only on DVD, so I switched back to the physical discs to get through season 5.

During my holiday break, I finished season 5 and jumped back to watching seasons 6 and 7 via streaming. I happened to look at the WGBH web site during this time to see if they were still airing the show, and if so, where they were in the series. In a bit of luck, season 8 was scheduled to begin airing on Friday nights starting in January, so I added it back into my TiVo's to-do list. (Of course, I could go back to Netflix and get the discs to finish season 8 if I want to, and not have to wait for the episodes to air.)

While I feel that the show isn't quite as compelling now as in its earlier seasons, and at times has even become somewhat predictable, it's still fairly entertaining, and its plots are often just a few millimeters off from the realm of events that could actually happen. But I have noticed one curious thing about WGBH's broadcasts.

When I was a young and highly impressionable lad in the 1970s, PBS had the reputation of being somewhat freer with broadcast standards than the big networks. At about age 11 I was introduced to the glory of Monty Python's Flying Circus (airing on WGBH), and although I didn't understand some of the cultural and historical references or know all of the British slang, I stuck around because topless women occasionally appeared, and as a bonus I witnessed some of the greatest sketch comedy ever performed.

I'm not sure exactly when PBS (or maybe it's just WBGH) got timid (maybe something to do with their corporate sponsors?), but I was both amused and annoyed to find that the occasional sprinklings of curse words uttered by characters on MI-5 were being edited out. It's particularly jarring, because the entire audio track drops out for a moment, which takes you out of the show. I'm sure the BBC never bothered to get the actors to record alternate dialogue lines (as The Sopranos did, foreseeing possible syndication) because it never would have occurred to them that such a prudish step was necessary.

Frankly, it isn't. The show airs at 10 pm on Fridays; there's no reason WGBH can't air these episodes without editing out the (very) few salty words, with a warning disclaimer before the broadcasts. There's plenty of the same sort of language being used on shows on AMC, TNT, FX, and other cable channels, which are not subject to FCC restrictions but still have to answer to advertisers. This nannying business worries me; we grown-ups need to be able to make our own decisions about such things. If you're uncomfortable with a show's language or thematic content, don't watch, and don't let your kids watch.

Thank goodness MPFC has been preserved on DVD, because it certainly wouldn't be aired in its original form today.