Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Robert Carlyle, Victoria Hamilton, David Haig, Richard Dormer, Marsha Thomason, Lisa Palfrey, Edward Bennett, Lucy Cohu, Joshua Hogan, Grace Hogg-Robinson, Richard Pepple, Andrew Buchan, Neil Stuke, Alexa Davies, Karan Gill, Dipo Ola, Georgie Bingham, Michael Jibson.
When it comes to politics, art and life are so entwinned that it can be difficult to discern the difference, to understand where fiction and fact blur and merge, where the lines of personal ambition overlap the need of entertainment; only politics seems to play with its own creation, and like Frankenstein looming over the unfortunate being as he pushes electricity through its monstrous shaped body, the result is one of indisputable carnage and denial of responsibility.
To capture the government in its most vulnerable moments either requires the ability to see the world through genuine farce, or to play it with exaggerated straightness, to amplify the threat and make it plausible so that the viewer becomes invested, feels the strain of the minister involved; and by its own admission creates the monster to which art becomes reality.
The second series of Cobra, with is subtitle of Cyberwar, is perhaps the political monster made real, whilst imitating the art that gives its own dark message on how we are closer to annihilation as a civilisation that we were at the height of the Cold War between 1945 and the Berlin Wall being torn down; and as the six part series is quite right in showing, the reason for the problem lays directly at the touch of a button, the stroke of a key.
Cobra: Cyberwar does for the digital age what many edge of the seat nuclear tales did for the children growing up in the shadow of the bomb, and yet it is one that is arguably more feasible in today’s more connected world, that at the switch of a button, a small line of code, a whole nation can be brought to its knees, physically, institutionally, and monetarily as the infrastructure of the country grinds to a shuddering, violent halt.
To capture this possible scenario without relegating the seriousness of the threat to that of farce takes courage, in both striking the right tone, and having actors portray the major fringes of belief that come with such events; and as Robert Carlyle returns as the under fire, almost embittered Prime Minister, Robert Sutherland, and with an excellent supporting cast, including the ever-sincere Victoria Hamilton, the effervescent David Haig, Richard Dormer, Lisa Palfrey, and the sublime Neil Stuke as the disturbingly creepy prospective member of Parliament who threatens to destabilise the party even further, what comes across is a nightmare framed, one that whilst steeped in fiction, has every chance of turning out to be true.
Art inspires, maybe it can lead, and should change attitudes for the better, but when it shows just how close we can come to seeing any power using the technology, be it Russia, China, The United States of America, and in particular our own country, to destroy another, then we have to take note of the failings of the system, that not everything computers can do for us is benign and beneficial.
A well-intentioned series, Cobra: Cyberwar is the warning dressed in the riches of art.
Ian D. Hall