This is a superb conspiracy thriller series (5 hours) set in the immediate future, about the threat we all now face from the surveillance society, where there is no privacy left at all. In this series, a chilling new British surveillance system called T. I. A. (for Total Information Awareness) is being launched by the British Government, so that everything about everybody can be known by the Government at the click of a mouse. Since Britain is already the most monitored society on earth (one CCTV camera for every eleven people, for instance), it was correct to make the British Government the villains of this series, as their present mania for total surveillance is well known to everyone, and already surpasses anything the Stasi could ever have dreamed of, and in any case the current British Government is only supported now by about 15% of the population, and everybody is waiting for them to be thrown out in 2010. Whether the new Government will then dismantle any CCTV cameras is another matter, but at least ID cards will be cancelled and the DNA database of innocent people and children will be ordered progressively destroyed, though that process will take many years. In this series the lead character is played by a bumbling, goofy, indecisive and wimpish Benedict Cumberbach, who portrays a young mathematician who has won the Field Medal in mathematics (the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize) for a brilliant theorem. His former girlfriend is now the minister introducing T.I.A., and she wants to recruit him to speak out on its behalf. This involves his having access to its workings. He has an older brother whom he barely knows, and with whom he has never had friendly relations. This brother is in Afghanistan, where he is apparently killed by a bomb. However, this brother, played by Max Beesley, has not been killed after all and returns to Britain under an alias to investigate who tried to kill him. It is all connected with those scheming pharmaceutical companies and a devilish Government plan to inject nano-technological identifiers into the bloodstreams of everyone on earth for universal ID card readouts by detectors on every street corner. Lots of people get killed, because control freaks enjoy that. Meanwhile, the brother's beautiful and mysterious wife, played by the fascinating Anamaria Marinca (one of those rare girls who commands attention even when shorn of her hair to an alarming degree, so that if she were less alluring she would look like one of those girls who had their heads shaved at the Liberation of Paris for sleeping with the Nazis), falls for Cumberbatch. This is the one thing that is really hard to believe in the series, because Cumberbatch could not be less appealing to any gal, I should have thought. But there is no accounting for taste or for casting directors. There is a mysterious man played with intense menace by Robert Carlyle, who when he finally speaks turns out to have an impenetrably think Scottish accent. The minister ex-girl friend also has a strong Northern Ireland accent. Certainly every attempt was made to ensure that this series could not possibly sell in America, as no one there could conceivably understand a word several of the regionally accented actors say. I suppose this is what is called 'the multi-accentual society', guaranteeing that no one can understand anyone else. Maybe it is the only way to defeat mass surveillance, if you speak in an incomprehensible accent. Eva Birthistle is superb as the chirpy but chilling minister, and old pro Geraldine James (who has never failed to deliver) is utterly terrifying as a behind the scenes power-wielder who guards the gates to the Prime Minister's office and is capable of anything. It is all thoroughly convincing and gripping stuff. It is very much an edge-of-the-potato-couch experience. And it is really important, as the message is loud and clear and everybody needs to hear it, so tell all your friends.
