Cautionary tale of turning to terror
Channel Four is already bracing itself for the backlash against its new four-part series about British jihadis moving to Syria to join IS.
The State follows the experiences of four radicalised men and women who left their lives behind in 2015 to take up arms with the terrorists.
Its writer and director Peter Kosminsky describes it as a “cautionary tale” – and has openly admitted he is anticipating a raft of complaints.
The series begins tonight at 9pm with the subsequent hourlong episodes airing on the following three nights at the same time.
The four British muslims make the journey, much of it under cover of darkness, to Raqqah. We’re introduced to student Ushna, 18, Jalal, 19, whose brother died fighting for IS, his pal Ziyaad, also 19, and mum and nurse Shakira, 26.
We learn of their reasons for joining the caliphate despite coming from very different backgrounds and how each becomes disenchanted with what they’ve got themselves into.
The show’s creator, whose last TV project was the BBC2 drama Wolf Hall, said he chose to tell the story through a drama rather than a documentary to explore its complexity.
Critics, however, are already hitting out at the way the series humanises terrorism, arguing that it makes the rhetoric that bit harder to swallow.
Kosminsky said: “There will be muslims who complain, ‘Here we are, terrorists again’. Others will see it as a willful attempt to make people who take this path more sympathetic than they should be.
“I want people to get a more complex view of an incredibly sad and emotive subject. It’s the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced as a dramatist.” He believes delving into the background of The State’s central characters before they were radicalised will force viewers to think about uncomfortable issues. “We do no service to victims of the blood-drenched cruelty of that regime by pretending that those who carried it out are all psychopaths. It might give us comfort to think ordinary people can’t descend to that level of vileness but history proves that’s rubbish.
“We have to confront the fact that terrible things are done by people who are not inherently evil.”
Kosminsky also draws parallels between The State and the period drama Wolf Hall.
He explains: “If you expressed religious dissent in Henry VIII’S England, you were likely to have various bits of your anatomy chopped off in public, to be imprisoned and tortured in truly barbaric ways.
“You could be beheaded and have your head put on a stake on a pole on London Bridge for the maggots and crows to feast on. It’s not that different from the kinds of punishments and atrocities which we now see manifest in the Islamic State.”
No IS atrocities are shown directly in the drama but it’s uncompromising in terms of emotional impact nonetheless.
The State begins on Channel Four tonight at 9pm and continues tomorrow.