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The State Within (2006)

2006 · Crime,Drama,Thriller · political-drama, spy-contemporary

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The State Within is a dense, politically charged six-part BBC thriller set at the intersection of British diplomacy and American power — a jetliner exploding over Washington DC pulls a British ambassador into a labyrinth of covert military operations, WMD cover-ups, backroom deals, and cold-blooded murder. The tone is brainy and relentless: it trusts its audience to track a large ensemble of morally ambiguous players without hand-holding, rewards patience with escalating revelations, and lands a finale reviewers describe as genuinely shocking. Aimed squarely at viewers who want their geopolitical paranoia taken seriously, it was received as a pointed, thinly veiled critique of the Bush era made at the height of that era.

From the reviewers

writers Lizzie Mickery and Daniel Percival are not about to spoon-feed you one single detail, so mentally you'd better be 'on your toes' at all times and keeping up with all the espionage, double-dealing and a large and exceptional cast, because this train's not stopping to wait for anybody.
the kinetic directing styles of Michael Offer in the first three episodes and writer Percival taking the helm for the remainder, ensure that it stays moving and engaging, even when there's not a lot of things blowing up or people getting dispatched in the nastiest ways possible.
lots of characters with ambiguous motives, very little is cut and dried, but with still enough "boo hiss" baddies to satisfy. It's not very often we get to see a political thriller where anything could happen, to any of the leading characters, at any time
Not until the fourth episode you get some sense what the story is about. Of course the plot seems far fetched. But if you look at Bush and his policy it suddenly is closer to home than you imagine.
Sharon Gless' performance as the steely Secretary of Defense who seems to be pulling all the strings and manipulating all the players in this nightmarish scenario

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