Secret State Squash: Episode One of C4's Busy Political Thriller

Is it me, or is the British high street wackier than Wonderland right now? I took a trip through town today and, five minutes in, found myself baffled. Mannequins can’t quite make their minds up on whether it’s New Years Eve or Christmas morning, kids are still scuttling around clad in their Halloween finery, and councils keep shooting off firework displays whenever anyone mentions (whisper it) sundown. It’s like 4 weeks on The X Factor rolled into one, big, trans-holiday mess. But we can scarcely lay blame on the British calendar for the night-before-finals-style cramming. In fact, overkill seems to be as ubiquitous as Bieber right now: second year deadlines keep on coming in packs of four or five; the box office has picked up a pesky habit of releasing all its worthwhile films on the same weekend; and I won’t even go into the horde of holidays-are-coming-style campaigns that have thronged their way into our advert breaks this week. I can almost feel the Boxing Day blues already…

In the deep end: Dawkins finds himself leading government 

It’s precisely this wall-to-wall way of the world that Deputy Prime Minister Tom Dawkins (Gabriel Byrne) found himself up against in the first installment of C4’s new Wednesday night drama, Secret State. When the plant of an American petrochemical giant exploded on British turf, desolating a city and killing dozens, the government found itself in the firing line. The PM made a mad dash across the pond to liaise with the big wigs of the firm, Petro-Fex, leaving his immediate junior to take the flack. When he got a call from the AWOL premier’s plane, telling him to sit tight and that a hefty compensation agreement had been negotiated, Dawkins breathed a little easier. Momentarily. The PM’s plane then fell off the radar and was later recovered as mere wreckage, cabinet ministers began sparring for the now-vacant top job, MI5 started stalking a cryptic journalist (played by Gina McKee) who claimed to have insider knowledge of scandal at the heart of the Petro-Fex, and the pathologist examining its victims revealed he’d found something sinister in the bodies. Oh, and the election was just around the corner. Alas, it never rains pours but it pours monsoons (the one exception, for me anyway, being internship offers…).

Gina McKee stars as quick-witted journalist Ellis Kane

I’d pick a plenteous plot over a pointless one any day, but Secret State did get a smidge too hectic in places; at times, it seemed like three standalone dramas had been shoehorned into one. MI5 bugging the phone calls of a wily reporter threatening to cause chaos before an election? I’d watch it. The tactics of fellow political party members lusting for promotion? I’d watch it. The death of a pathologist who was set to smear the reputation of an American corporation? I’d probably watch it, albeit whilst bemoaning the fact that I’d seen it a dozen times before. And the storyline didn’t get any tamer as the credits drew closer, either, with a potential terrorism subplot and the minutes of the former PM’s meeting with the Petro-Fex heads looking likely to crash the already crowded party in time for next week. Character dynamics, also, gradually became harder than a Kardashian to keep up with (geddit?). By the end of Wednesday’s episode, two junior MI5 workers had jostled their way into the frame and seemed bent on getting in as much sexual chemistry as they could without us knowing their names. Neither the time nor the place, guys.

Shady character? The show hinted of a dark side to the new PM

Despite the elaborate plot, though, the show did allow ample time for audiences to fall for its benign and bumbling hero. He might have spent about eighty percent of the show looking like he’d rather be in bed with a crossword and a stiff Ovaltine, but Dawkins’ character had enough grit in the remaining twenty to keep us on side. ‘You might feel, as I do,’ he said as he addressed to the press outside Number 10, ‘that our nation is being sorely tested.’ Dawkins remained inviolable to the cutthroat tactics favored by Foreign and Home Secretaries Ros Yelland (Sylvestra La Touzel) and Felix Durrell (Rupert Graves) as they went about vying for the premiership, and vowed not to let the Petro-Fex disaster go unavenged. When Chief Whip John Hodder (Charles Dance) revealed that the public wanted to see him take the reigns after the demise of the party’s head, Dawkins’ muted self-efficacy and quiet resolve were played out in just the right ratio. With their eye on the next three episodes of the series, the show’s producers ensured Dawkins’ goody-goody bit wouldn’t begin to go stale anytime soon, either. As he met his ex-wife and asked after his estranged kids, the seeds that Dawkins had a dark underbelly were sown, and, when his former MI5 buddy Tony (Douglas Hodge) assured his secretary that former army captain Tom ‘wasn’t always the paragon of virtue he is now,’ those seeds turned into thickets.

In fact, once one got past the scene-happy scripting, it was easy to see the show’s listless merits: it captured spot-on the sobriety favored by ITV’s top weekday dramas; it never once cheapened itself by focusing on the big bang at the Petro-Fex plant, or the subsequent wailings of the survivor’s families; and it capitalized on London’s hot spots well enough to put 2012’s royal processions to shame. Homeland still has my vote as far as C4’s political dramas go, but Secret State might just shape up to be a solid opposition