Who’s watching who?
AS GEORGE Orwell’s 1984 predicted, these days Big Brother is always watching us.
Constant surveillance is an everyday given, personal information can be accessed and weaponised through the internet, used and manipulated to win elections and referendums, and our household devices can apparently listen in and spy on us.
And now, beyond ‘Fake News’, we’ve got ‘Deep Fakes’, where video footage can be created that looks and sounds so realistic it’s indistinguishable from the real thing – and which could genuinely threaten democracy and criminal justice.
So it seems perfect timing for
this gripping new drama which takes a frankly rather terrifying look at the modern world.
It’s a cracking cast, led by Holliday Grainger and Callum Turner, with Ron Perlman, Famke Janssen, Nigel Lindsay, Laura Haddock, Ralph Ineson and Ben Miles.
Turner plays soldier Shaun Emery, whose conviction for a murder in Afghanistan is overturned on appeal when his barrister Hannah Roberts (Laura Haddock) proves the original video evidence was flawed.
Released back to his life as a free man, later that night a CCTV operator witnesses some shocking footage and Shaun immediately finds himself arrested and fighting for his freedom all over again. Leading the investigation is DI Rachel Carey (Grainger) – newly-promoted to Homicide after working in Counter Terrorism, but keen to land a big win so she can get back to her flashy well-resourced intelligence services role. It’s clever, compelling, stylishly-shot, and pretty terrifying.