Be careful what you wish for is the constant message of the first episode of Channel 4’s new drama Undeclared War.
Be careful what you wish for if you’re Saara Parvin (Hannah Hallick-Brown, doing a great job in her first major TV role), a super-smart graduate who starts work experience alongside even smarter computer analysts at GCHQ on the same day (in 2024 ) the country has been hit by a cyberattack from an as-yet-unidentified source. “55% of the internet is down,” says the boss, Danny (Simon Pegg, in a sort of non-animated version of his Mission Impossible role). It appears to target non-essential online services and is billed as: “Skillfully targeted for maximum disruption and minimum risk to lives.” However, Saara proves to be brighter than all of them and discovers a second, hidden virus in the first that would take care of the remaining 45% and bring the country to its knees. She attends a Cobra meeting – which seems unlikely, but no less likely than our own Prime Minister not showing up to most of his during a pandemic – but doesn’t make it to the hospital to see her father , before dying after an apparent suicide attempt.
And you should be careful what you wish for if, like me, you were hoping The Undeclared War would deliver the perfect dose of quality hokum and escapism from the real world as it crashes and burns around us. A cyber attack? How fun! It doesn’t even come close to the list of worries I’m dealing with these days. In fact, if that 55% includes the transmission of daily headlines from around the world, I’d welcome it. “Take a temporary break from the burden of terrible knowledge!” I would cry.
Alas, Undeclared War has taken the other route and is clearly destined to usher us all into a new field of concern. Created by multi-award winner Peter Kosminski (who directed the brilliant Wolf Hall) after three years of research into modern intelligence and cyber security, the six-part series is charged with that research and taken very seriously indeed.
Too Serious… Adrian Lester in The Undeclared War. Photo: Channel 4
It moves at a glacial pace and the GCHQ staff look like reluctant office workers on data entry shifts tapping away boredly at their keyboards until it’s time for the mandatory tea break – rather than people frantically trying to hold off an enemy attack that it can kill thousands and takes the nation back to the Middle Ages, or at least the 1990s. Although I’m sure it’s a lot more realistic than the sweaty characters Hollywood gives us (although are there really going to be that many audible groans from code-breaking professionals when their boss tells them they have to go back to the code of malware?), this doesn’t provide much dramatic tension.
Kosminski’s involvement probably explains the appearance of such heavyweights as Adrian Lester (Prime Minister Andrew Macinde, who apparently overthrew Boris 15 months ago), Alex Jennings (GCHQ chief David Neill) and – coming up in later episodes – Mark Rylance ( John Yeabsley, a former GCHQ asset brought back to help them deal with the attack). Right now – and only one episode was available for review – they don’t have much to do. The focus on young Saara’s discovery of the second virus relegates them to the sidelines in the same way that the adults were peripheral to Enid Blyton’s adventure. It’s also reminiscent of children’s librarian Eileen Colwell’s gentle mockery of her settings – “But what hope is there for a gang of desperate men against four children?” The script is also Blytonesque. People say “We’re in!” a lot, or “We’re offline!” or “It’s 70% reverse engineered,” with not much in between.
Right now, The Undeclared War feels like it aimed high and missed. But with five episodes to go, Kosminski at the helm, and an excellent cast that you’d think read everything before it was written, let’s hope the drama and insight piles up. Maybe we’ll leave the static setting of GCHQ from time to time and find out how people’s lives go without 55% of the internet? If not, it’ll feel like a rich premise wasted, and we’ll be left hoping for a remake that lives up to its potential as a wonderful contribution to the shiny tech goof genre – something we can all do with in this tough time.
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