I'm not really here because I have a cold!

The outstanding episode of the season, to me, was the second one.

I thought you might enjoy that one *g*. It was a very good episode anyway but Alexander Siddig was the icing on the cake. In some ways I wish his character had survived as he would have been a wonderful recurring guest.

Ruth, the new character, fulfils the smart and middle-aged criteria, and I can see why kathyh and others love her so much; she’s endearing in her quiet, book-loving and lamp-damaging way.

She gets stronger as she goes along. She's also quite capable of using her very ordinariness to delude people into underestimating her.

whereas I suspect we were meant to approve of Christine’s action.

Not sure. The usual attitude of British spy series (and novels) to the CIA is highly ambivalent so I suspect it was meant to be an open question as to whether what Christine did was right or not.

The episode I liked least was unfortunately the finale.

It was exciting at the time, but in retrospect not the series finest hour.