Time to shelve the Downton Abbey 2 talk for a day. Everyone already has the DVR set for Sunday, January 8, 2012 for the second series premiere as part of PBS’ Masterpiece series. Time to turn our attention to, perhaps, the best television series, bar none….Spooks, or MI-5, in the United States.

With the final series set to premiere in April on public television stations across the U.S., it’s time to prepare, America, for what the U.K. already knows. For a series such as Spooks to remain fresh and continue to keep audiences coming back week after week, you need more than your share of memorable moments. Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) picked his top-10 moments from the first 9 seasons of the series for the Radio Times. Here are the first five. To me one of the most memorable only made it to #8 in Harry’s complete list in the Radio Times – the bomb in Tom’s house from series 1, episode 6. Oh, well. How did you fare?

• 1. Danny’s death (Series 3 Ep 10)

As with many Spooks deaths, you wouldn’t have expected it. Harry had to choose which of Danny and Fiona had to die and Danny makes the choice for him by calling the villain “a death worshipping fascist”. He then gets shot in the head.

• 2. The deep-fat fryer (Series 1 Ep 2)

Lisa Faulkner, that lovely girl from Holby City was not only killed, but killed in a thoroughly gruesome way. It was done for impact and it worked. Everyone tuned in the following week. Cynical but, hey, it’s TV

• 3. Adam’s death (Series 7 Ep 1)

People knew Adam [Rupert Penry Jones] was leaving but, like Adam’s exit, the details can still surprise. Frequently you read scenes and you think “They won’t shoot that” and frequently they don’t because it’s too difficult or too implausible, but they really pulled it off with Adam’s death in the car bomb.

• 4. Tom’s decommissioning (Series 3 Ep 2)

You can usually tell when actors are destined for great things, and that was definitely the case with Matthew Macfadyen. When you see Matthew in full flow – as he was with Tom Quinn being forced to retire – you know that you’re in the room with something special.

• 5. Colin wells’s hanging (Series 5 Ep 1)

One of the Spooks’ mantras has always been “Kill your heroes” – even if they’re not right in the frontline. Geeky Colin was a fan favourite so his end was almost more shocking than one of the leads.

The Telegraph picked their top-10 memorable moments just prior to the premiere in the UK and, with only one exception, they match Harry’s. Have to say, I’m with the Telegraph on this one. Great, great scene.

• What’s your poison? – when veteran Section D head Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) wears black leather gloves indoors, it spells trouble for someone. So it proved in series nine, when he learned that retired Home Secretary Nicholas Blake (Robert Glenister) was behind the bomb that killed Ros Myers. Pearce visited Blake’s Highland retreat with a bottle of single malt to toast old times. The whisky was poisoned. Vengeful Harry watched his former boss take a dram and die grovelling in front of a roaring log fire.