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shallownessI see that Sanditon has returned to ITV, after appearing first on Britbox, which amused me, because it just highlghts Britbox’s problem. Wouldn’t the target audience rather subscribe to Netflix (or borrow someone’s password) to watch Bridgerton over seeing this earlier, knowing it’s coming to ITV? Anyway, I will get round to watching it and going ‘Jane Austen would never write that!’ although I’m sure it’ll depart even further from what she did write by now. I only hope that Andrew Davies leaves Babbington and Esther to their HEA.
The Undeclared War ep 1
Someone give Peter Kominsky a prize for reading the signs and portents better than others. I watched this about a fortnight after it first aired, thanks, All4, and had to applaud how the show’s PM got in. Pretty decent guess. This was after Boris Johnson had resigned and before the first round of voting by Conservative MPs, when no black man was standing (although other people of colour were.) Radio Times was interviewing Adrian Lester and making a big deal of his playing a black PM, but MotherFatherSon did that, a show that was less successful on the guessing the near future front. Yes, it’s a rare sight, but not the first.
Set circa 2024, it’s more honest than those claiming ‘the pandemic is over’ with supporting characters often wearing masks, mainly nurses and security officers, although I rolled my eyes at the colleague who wouldn’t shake hands with Saara and then just handed her a pass. I understand, again from Radio Times, that Kominsky started working on this in 2017, with the idea of the cyber warfare setting, but don’t know when it was filmed.
Anyway, we follow Saara, a coding whizz, on her first day of extended work experience at GCHQ, the day that a stress test on BT sets off a malware attack that brings down some of the internet. The likely culprit is Russia.
The cyber thriller element interested me more than the family drama, which I thought was a little broad brush. Having said that, the tensions between Saara’s mother and her daughter were rich, daddy’s girl, not a good enough Asian daughter even though she’s conditioned enough to suggest she should cook for her boyfriend after telling him HER father died. I mean, cooking and looking after others may be your coping mechanism, but… And on top of that, Saara’d been absent at her family’s moment of need because she was helping with national security, and the only family member with an inkling of that was now dead. Add to that how raw grief made things, and it was effective at making Saara sympathetic, although I didn’t feel the impact of her growing up through lockdown in a pandemic on her.
I liked the dramatization of what she was doing on the computer, dressed in a boiler suit with all sort of tools at her disposal, although were phone books in a phone booth ever a thing? I don’t remember that, and I don’t think anyone younger than me would either. Of course, Our Heroine was the one to spot what the pale, male and stale pros failed to, and ended up in the COBR rooms being celebrated until Cheekbones (Ed Stoppard) lobbed a fair criticism at GCHQ.
I liked Simon Pegg as the GCHQ boss, who came off as a manager who knew what he was doing, balancing dealing with the politicos and trying to be a good boss (not knowing Saara’d had a bereavement.) Adrian Lester made less of an impression, in part because his character was generally mediated through a screen, being heckled or delivering a speech. But yeah, now the world has cottoned on more to the cyber threat than when this was written, especially coming from a certain direction, and it looks like being a timely tale in an alt setting that’s less alt than we would like.
So I’m probably going to prioritise watching a couple of episodes of this over catching up with Sanditon.
[Edited 27/1/25 for typos.]
The Undeclared War ep 1
Someone give Peter Kominsky a prize for reading the signs and portents better than others. I watched this about a fortnight after it first aired, thanks, All4, and had to applaud how the show’s PM got in. Pretty decent guess. This was after Boris Johnson had resigned and before the first round of voting by Conservative MPs, when no black man was standing (although other people of colour were.) Radio Times was interviewing Adrian Lester and making a big deal of his playing a black PM, but MotherFatherSon did that, a show that was less successful on the guessing the near future front. Yes, it’s a rare sight, but not the first.
Set circa 2024, it’s more honest than those claiming ‘the pandemic is over’ with supporting characters often wearing masks, mainly nurses and security officers, although I rolled my eyes at the colleague who wouldn’t shake hands with Saara and then just handed her a pass. I understand, again from Radio Times, that Kominsky started working on this in 2017, with the idea of the cyber warfare setting, but don’t know when it was filmed.
Anyway, we follow Saara, a coding whizz, on her first day of extended work experience at GCHQ, the day that a stress test on BT sets off a malware attack that brings down some of the internet. The likely culprit is Russia.
The cyber thriller element interested me more than the family drama, which I thought was a little broad brush. Having said that, the tensions between Saara’s mother and her daughter were rich, daddy’s girl, not a good enough Asian daughter even though she’s conditioned enough to suggest she should cook for her boyfriend after telling him HER father died. I mean, cooking and looking after others may be your coping mechanism, but… And on top of that, Saara’d been absent at her family’s moment of need because she was helping with national security, and the only family member with an inkling of that was now dead. Add to that how raw grief made things, and it was effective at making Saara sympathetic, although I didn’t feel the impact of her growing up through lockdown in a pandemic on her.
I liked the dramatization of what she was doing on the computer, dressed in a boiler suit with all sort of tools at her disposal, although were phone books in a phone booth ever a thing? I don’t remember that, and I don’t think anyone younger than me would either. Of course, Our Heroine was the one to spot what the pale, male and stale pros failed to, and ended up in the COBR rooms being celebrated until Cheekbones (Ed Stoppard) lobbed a fair criticism at GCHQ.
I liked Simon Pegg as the GCHQ boss, who came off as a manager who knew what he was doing, balancing dealing with the politicos and trying to be a good boss (not knowing Saara’d had a bereavement.) Adrian Lester made less of an impression, in part because his character was generally mediated through a screen, being heckled or delivering a speech. But yeah, now the world has cottoned on more to the cyber threat than when this was written, especially coming from a certain direction, and it looks like being a timely tale in an alt setting that’s less alt than we would like.
So I’m probably going to prioritise watching a couple of episodes of this over catching up with Sanditon.
[Edited 27/1/25 for typos.]
