BBC planning Spooks game

BBC Multimedia has announced plans to make TV series Spooks into a PS2/Xbox/PC game, which will launch this autumn to coincide with the broadcasting of the third series of the BBC's BAFTA-winning drama.

This is the first time that a BBC drama has been made into a videogame. Developed by in-house BBC studio Gamezlab, the Spooks game will feature all the main characters from the TV show, giving players control of the eponymous MI5 spooks in missions ranging from surveillance and code-breaking to stealthy tailing of suspects and cracking criminal cells.

With a script written by TV show writer Steve Bailie, the Spooks game will aim to capture the feeling of the show throughout, although unlike the show the spread of locations will include some missions overseas. The closest we got on the small screen was head spook Tom Quinn's baffling aquatic antics in the final episode of series two.

As a fan of the show (handy, eh?), this writer is sort of looking forward to this, but it's an ambitious project and will be difficult to realise effectively - a tough undertaking for Gamezlab, certainly, and some might question their credentials following the BBC's critically maligned FightBox offerings, which Gamezlab also developed.