10 Most Shocking Moments In Spooks

This is the scene that taught audiences not to bet on the lifespan of many a fictional MI5 officer!

In the second episode of Series 1, Matthew Macfadyen's Tom Quinn and Lisa Faulkner's Helen Flynn pose as a married couple in order to infiltrate the inner circle of right wing leader, Robert Osbourne (Kevin McNally). Growing increasingly suspicious of the couple after Helen makes a social blunder, Osbourne abducts them and interrogates them in the kitchen of his waste management facility. When Tom refuses to co-operate, Osbourne pushes Helen's hand and then her head into a deep fat fryer, before she is shot in the head.

Lisa Faulkner was the best known member of the MI5 team when this episode aired, having appeared in numerous British soap operas. Under pressure to make the second episode of Spooks live up to the first, the writing team worked the death scene into the episode to ensure that audiences knew that no one in Spooks is safe.

Helen's death scene led to the highest number of complaints for a television programme when it was aired in 2002. Undoubtedly, the fact that so little of Helen's torture and subsequent murder are seen onscreen made the sequence all the more upsetting.