"The Last Enemy is an emotional odyssey about a man in search of the truth" (Gub Neal, producer)
The Last Enemy
Writer - Peter Berry, Director - Iain B MacDonald
Producer - Gub Neal (Box TV) for BBC TV/WGBH Boston
In the opening few minutes of this 5-part Brit thriller a hairy Max Beesley is seen exploding along with his jeep on a lonely road in Afganistan where his character Michael Ezard is (was) an aid worker. Now, Beesley left a good gig in Hotel Babylon to do this part so I wasn’t convinced that he’d died... unless they were going to do a lot of flash backs. Distracting though my private musings about casting choices were during these crucial expositionary moments, they were an appropriately cynical and suspicious response, given that the episode continued in the vein of Spooks with a plethora of mysterious disappearances including creepy neighbours, a dead body and a grieving widow.
In the near future, Stephen Ezard (Benedict Cumberbatch) is an OCD afflicted maths genius and has returned to a scarily hi-tech England, full of CCTV surveillance and military-grade data analysis, after a long absence in China to attend his brother Michael’s funeral. Although professing a limited filial bond, he soon comes to question the circumstances of Michael’s death and falls into the role of accidental hero. Michael’s widow Yasmin chooses to follow her own version of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief – stage one, shag your dead husband’s brother.
You can tell we’re in hi-tech fiction-land because the swipe cards in this world give a self-satisfied little whizzy noise as they obligingly open doors and pay your bills. In my world they usually elicit a less than desirable shriek denoting an error, grrrr...
A lot of improbable narrative leaps were made possible through the existence of TIA – Total Information Access, a government sanctioned data analysis system that Ezard is given access to and you really have to suspend your disbelief at the plot contrivance that allows this. There’s an odd imbalance between genuinely thrilling - Robert Carlyle skulks around looking divinely menacing as a retired spook, and wonderfully silly in that uniquely understated English style – a stately Geraldine James orders an ‘Olympic’ breakfast.
I’m hoping it settles into a more recognisable thriller. All in all it’s not clear who is on whose side and who the good guys actually are which is about right. I’m hanging in here for the long haul.
The Last Enemy screens on ABC1 Sundays 8.30pm
No comments:
Post a Comment