The series wrapped last Sunday on ABC1 (16th August) with the good guys, or at least those who we have come to sympathise with, failing to blow the whistle on the moral and political corruption that they have spent so long investigating. There is no cosy triumph of idealogical dissidents over the power-crazed politicos to leave us feeling smug. Instead, a chilling and disquieting feeling of powerlessness seeps through you during the final 15 minutes of the episode.
The plot turned out to be a great deal simpler than first impressions let on. A group of rogue scientists, with government approval it seems, developed a vaccine that also contained an indentity tag and set about testing it in overseas refugee camps. The nano bio-technology proves fatal to certain ethnic types, a terrifying prospect for the ongoing war of terror. The British government then go to great lengths to cover up the fatalities and the tag’s existence – yes in the name of self interest but also, as Home Secretary Eleanor Brooke points out to the dumb-struck Stephen Ezard, terrorists would inevitably use the information as a reason and justification for further acts of aggression.
Poor Stephen, who only returned to England to bury his brother, finds himself in the final scene much as Winston Smith does in 1984. Utterly broken, at the mercy of the state. Confined to the shores of a country that can track his every movement through a tiny ID tag implanted under his skin and estranged from the woman he loves who will never be allowed to return to the UK.
The ethical conundrums were life-like in their untidiness and the moral ambiguities very satisfyingly complex. Ezard is not the man he was at the start of this wonderful thriller. In that final shot, as he sits at his desk, staring out of his window you sensed a maelstrom of internal conflict itching to burst forth and fight against the massacre to his civil liberties. There’s obviously room for a follow up story; it’s a sci-fi world (or ‘predictive’ world as producer Gub Neal describes it), that has all the hallmarks of a returning series but, I kinda hope there won’t be one. It’s good once in a while to accept a drama in which the ends don’t tie up neatly.
The plot turned out to be a great deal simpler than first impressions let on. A group of rogue scientists, with government approval it seems, developed a vaccine that also contained an indentity tag and set about testing it in overseas refugee camps. The nano bio-technology proves fatal to certain ethnic types, a terrifying prospect for the ongoing war of terror. The British government then go to great lengths to cover up the fatalities and the tag’s existence – yes in the name of self interest but also, as Home Secretary Eleanor Brooke points out to the dumb-struck Stephen Ezard, terrorists would inevitably use the information as a reason and justification for further acts of aggression.
Poor Stephen, who only returned to England to bury his brother, finds himself in the final scene much as Winston Smith does in 1984. Utterly broken, at the mercy of the state. Confined to the shores of a country that can track his every movement through a tiny ID tag implanted under his skin and estranged from the woman he loves who will never be allowed to return to the UK.
The ethical conundrums were life-like in their untidiness and the moral ambiguities very satisfyingly complex. Ezard is not the man he was at the start of this wonderful thriller. In that final shot, as he sits at his desk, staring out of his window you sensed a maelstrom of internal conflict itching to burst forth and fight against the massacre to his civil liberties. There’s obviously room for a follow up story; it’s a sci-fi world (or ‘predictive’ world as producer Gub Neal describes it), that has all the hallmarks of a returning series but, I kinda hope there won’t be one. It’s good once in a while to accept a drama in which the ends don’t tie up neatly.
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