Slick, unsettling cyber-thriller
Beautifully extrapolating modern-day concerns into a near-future nightmare, this short series works best when focused on the rapidly unfolding political crisis, James Croot finds.
April 12, 2024. It is a day when Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) did not exactly cover themselves in glory.
Their stress-testing of British Telecom’s cybersecurity systems was apparently used as cover by some nefarious actors to take out half the country’s internet.
Rail signalling went offline, online banking collapsed, online shopping simply ceased – and yet social media was unaffected.
As their boffins spend the next day slowly restoring affected services, it quickly becomes apparent this was a carefully targeted malware attack designed to cause mass disruption – without putting any lives at risk.
As veteran writer-director Peter Kosminsky’s (The State, Wolf Hall) near-future-set, sixpart political thriller, The Undeclared War (now streaming on TVNZ+), kicks into gear though, that does not reduce the ire of Prime Minister Andrew Makinde (Adrian Lester).
Behind in the polls, presiding over a deep economic crisis and in the middle of an election campaign, while public mistrust of officials is at its highest-ever levels, he is concerned this ‘‘event’’ is making them look corrupt – and incompetent.
And with rumours swirling that the Russians were responsible, there is also pressure for a quick retaliation.
High-ranking GCHQ official Danny Patrick (Simon Pegg) countenances against such a move, concerned that escalation will only lead to a much larger disaster.
However, someone may have already done their dirty work – a ‘‘patriot’’ claiming to have lit up Russia President Vladimir Putin’s office with flashing alarms.
There may also be a bigger issue. Analysis of the initial malware by GCHQ intern Saara Parvin (an impressive Hannah Khalique-brown) has uncovered a trigger for a second wave, timed to coincide with the start of the working week. Its effect would be much more wide-ranging – and devastating.
While GCHQ officials proudly boast of the finding during a briefing to ministers, they are less impressed, concerned that it was missed by all the intelligence organisation’s senior staff and worried that it might not be the only nasty surprise hidden in the code.
Like Russell T Davies’ magnificent Years and Years, this slick, solid drama beautifully extrapolates increasing modern-day concerns into a near-future nightmare, and grounds the story through Saara’s own family crisis.
It works best when focused on the rapidly unfolding political crisis.
Pegg (Hot Fuzz) and Lester (Hustle) provide solid anchors, and Alex Jennings (The Lady in the Van) and Mark Rylance (The Phantom of the Open) add their weight and gravitas to the impressive ensemble.
Where it goes a little astray is in the Inception-esque ‘‘realisations’’ of Saara’s ‘‘adventures in coding’’.
Complete with a Tomb Raider-like avatar, these surreal sequences just feel a little forced – more a slice of 1970s sci-fi than a hot-button contemporary thriller.
The Undeclared War is now available to stream on TVNZ+.