This is one of the best TV conspiracy series ever made. For six episodes it is edge-of-your seat, and the performances are staggering. Ben Daniels does a spectacular job of dominating the entire series with his enigmatic and shifting intensity as the head of security for the British Embassy in Washington. We don't know for several episodes whose side he is really on, so complex is the web of political intrigue, and so many are the bluffs and double-bluffs of the story line. Another massive presence on the screen is the overwhelmingly powerful Sharon Gless, who plays the American Secretary of Defence. Rarely has an actor or actress in a TV series so completely portrayed a ruthless political operator so sure of power and not afraid to use it every minute of every day. When she looks at people, they generally curl up like fried strips of bacon, just in sheer terror. The series is a very thinly veiled attack on former Vice President Dick Cheney and the company Halliburton, of which he had previously been CEO. In the series, he becomes the woman played by Sharon Gless, and Halliburton becomes a sinister company named Armitage, of which she had been CEO. A disclaimer at the beginning of the series saying that no real company is portrayed is not so much an act of protection against law suits as an 'up yours' act of defiance, since any discerning person can see at once what the series is about. Instead of provoking the invasion of Iraq and the overthrowing of Saddam, the series is about the provoking of an invasion against the Central Asian country of Tyrgyzstan, whose oppressive dictator also rants on television all the time. Once again, we have the 'weapons of mass destruction' which don't exist, and all that goes with it. As a study of the corruption of power and the ruthless pursuit of international power politics by scheming defence companies and what Eisenhower called 'the military industrial complex', TV series don't get any more gripping or convincing than this. The series opens with a fantastic scene where a jet plane explodes in the air because of a bomb, and the wreckage showers down on a motorway. The series's hero, the British Ambassador to Washington, played convincingly and with every nuance entirely perfect by Jason Isaacs, is in a car directly below at the time and tries to save a woman from a burning car, but it explodes and she is killed in front of his eyes. And that is only the beginning of the first episode. The excitement mounts from there. The series is produced by the glamorous Grainne Marmion (pronounced 'grahn-yah', and she's unmistakably female), who has spared no effort, and the direction shared by Michael Offer and Daniel Percival (he also co-scripted with Lizzie Mickery) is terrific; the scripts are brilliant. Genevieve O'Reilly, always a favourite waif (who came into her own the next year as the star of the series 'The Time of Your Life'), does an excellent supporting job with her sensitive face and trembling voice, which probes possibilities like a hand reaching for a glass of water by the bed in the dark. Really, they are all so good, the menace and the anxiety and the danger are so palpable, that there is no room for any hairs to rise on the back of your neck, because the series has gripped you so tightly by the throat.
Review of The State Within
