In today's penultimate Love Fest post, the pictures are from Ben's appearance in Season 4 of Spooks, in which he plays a seriously crazy Russian!
All caps are clickable thumbnails:
Spooks: The Russian (4.08)
Ben Daniels' characteer, Oleg Korsakov, is a gorgeously ruthless and psychotic Russian businessman whose dad was a big name in the Russian communist movement decades before. He's in England and waiting to get British citizenship, and then he intends to buy up NHS hospitals and asset strip them (ie sell them off and use the land for more profitable things). MI5 have been running an op on him, intending to bring him down - but then the Cabinet change their minds because the NHS is so desperate for money - and because Korsakov's promised not to do the same thing in England that he did in Russia (yeah, right!) However, MI5 decide to ignore their orders and continue with the op. Harry recruits a former KGB spy, Hugo Ross (George Baker) who's newly released from 30 years imprisonment, to go up against Korsakov in the hope of getting the hard evidence that Harry needs to put Korsakov away. Oh - and Korsakov has a memory-wiping drug that makes Jack Harkness' Retcon look tame by comparison!
Hugo Ross - who knew Korsakov's dad, Boris Kadinsky in the old days - comes to meet his son, to check him out for Harry. (Korsakov was brought up as an orphan to protect him since his father was likely to be a target of the West - hence his last name is different to his father's.)
He's looking a bit manic here - don't mess with this guy - he'd kill you as soon as look at you!
Don't let that smile fool you - he's up to no good and someone's going to get badly hurt in a very short while.
And there's the pain moment - Korsakov injects Hugo Ross with the memory wipe drug - which leaves victims unable to remember much of anything as it wipes the frontal cortex. Nasty, vicious thug - but he gets his - the Russians arrest him after he flees back home.