Be careful what you wish for if you are Saara Parvin (Hannah Khalique-Brown, who does a good job in her first major TV role), a brilliant graduate who begins her work experience next to the even brighter computer analysts at GCHQ the same day (in 2024) the country is affected by a cyber attack from an as yet unknown source. “55% of Internet usage has fallen,” says the boss, Danny (Simon Peg, in a non-cartoon version of his role in Mission Impossible). It seems to have targeted non-core online services and is considered: “Smartly targeted for maximum inconvenience and minimal risk to life”. Saara, however, turns out to be the brightest of all and finds a second, hidden virus in the first that would take care of the other 45% and bring the country to its knees. She manages to sit down at a Cobra meeting – which is unlikely, but no more unlikely, than for our prime minister not to go during a pandemic – but fails to get to the hospital to see her father before she dies after an apparent suicide attempt. And you have to be careful what you wish for, if, like me, you hoped that The Undeclared War would provide the perfect dose of quality hokum and escape from the real world as it crashes and burns around us. Cyber attack? What FUN! It does not even come close to making the list of the anxieties I face these days. In fact, if this 55% included the transmission of daily titles from around the world, I would welcome it. “Bring the temporary respite from the weight of awful knowledge!” I would cry. Alas, the Invincible War has taken the other path and is clearly designed to introduce us all to a new field of concern. Created by award-winning Peter Kosminsky (directed by the brilliant Wolf Hall) after three years of research into modern intelligence and cyber security, the six-part series wears this research heavily and takes itself very seriously. Too serious Άν Adrian Leicester in The Invincible War. Photo: Channel 4 It’s icy, and GCHQ staff has the air of reluctant office workers on data entry shifts, tapping their keyboards boringly until it’s time for a mandatory tea break – instead of people trying desperately to contain a hostile attack. to kill thousands and hurl the nation back into the Middle Ages, or at least into the 1990s. moans from professionals who break code when their boss tells them to go back to malware code;), do not provide much in the way of dramatic intensity. Kosminsky’s involvement probably explains the emergence of heavyweights such as Adrian Lester (Prime Minister Andrew Makinde, who apparently ousted Boris 15 months ago), Alex Jennings (head of GCHQ, David Neal) and – even in subsequent episodes – Mark Rylance (John Yeabsley, a former GCHQ asset returned to help them cope with the attack). At the moment – and only one episode was available for control – they do not have much to do. Concentration on the discovery of the second virus by the young Saara expels them to the margins in the same way that adults were peripherals on an Enid Blyton adventure. She also recalls the gentle mockery of her sets by children’s librarian Eileen Colwell – “But what hope does a group of desperate men have against four children?” The script is also Blytonesque. People say “We are inside!” a lot or “We are offline!” or “It is 70% reverse engineering”, without many intermediates. For now, The Undeclared War feels like it was aiming high and losing. But with five episodes to complete, Kosminsky at the helm and a distinguished cast who, you would think, read the whole issue before they recorded, let alone drama and insight. Maybe we occasionally leave the static setting of GCHQ and learn how life goes for people without 55% of the internet? If not, we will feel like a rich case has been lost and we will be left to hope for a remake that builds on its potential as a great contribution to the kind of glossy technology nonsense – something we could all do at this difficult time.
