It took me a while, but over the weekend I caught up with The State Within. I saw the first four parts a fortnight or so ago in a marathon Sunday morning session, and really got into it. Of course you can't really buy Jason Isaacs as a gung-ho ambassador who gets to run around town ditching his security left, right and centre. But the complicated plot had enough twists and turns to keep everyone going. From the snarly Ben Daniels playing the seemingly duplicitous Nicholas Brockhurst to Neil Pearson playing the slimey political type, and Lennie James (soon to be seen as a very dodgy looking character in Jericho) as the death-row convict Luke Gardener, all the characters were great. There strong female characters too led by Eva Birtwhistle as the human rights liaison (do they have that sort of thing in the US Embassy?) Jane Lavery to Sharon Gless' Madeleine Albright Secretary of State and Genevieve O'Reilly's Caroline Hanley.
The series ran over six weeks, much as the wonderful State of Play did a couple of years ago, but the complexities of the plot may have better served the series if it had ran over three weeks in two hour chunks.
It may not have garnered the ratings (as Andrew Collins has noted - he liked it too), but I'm happy to see more of this kind of stuff.
Posted by adambowie at December 11, 2006 9:26 PM