The Last Enemy is a BBC mini-series which aired on PBS stations in the U.S. last fall, as part of their new "Masterpiece Contemporary" series. It's a science fiction-tinged story about the UK in the near future and an ID initiative called T.I.A (Total Information Awareness). This new form of tracking people ties into Great Britain's current penchant for surveillance, which presently includes over 5 million CCTV (closed circuit TV) cameras, which amounts to about one camera per 12 people. Not so science-fictiony now, eh?
The 5-part mini-series stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Max Beesley as the Ezard brothers, Stephen and Michael. As the series begins, Michael is killed in Afghanistan, where he worked as a doctor in a refugee camp. Stephen, a brilliant mathemetician, returns form China to London for his brother's funeral and falls madly in love with the sister-in-law he never knew existed, Dr. Yasim Anwar (Anamaria Marinca). Stephen's return to London is closely monitored by the government, which enlists his aid in helping to convince the public that their new heavy-duty identification database--licensed to a company OUTSIDE the government--is a good idea. Stephen accepts an offer to refund his research in China for the next 3 years in exchange for his candid explanation and endorsement of the T.I.A program.
And then it all falls apart.
Lurking around in all of this is David Russell, an ex-British Intelligence officer, who may or may not have lost a daughter linked to the refugee camp Michael Ezard worked in. Russell is played by Robert Carlyle, and sometimes his Scottish accent is so inpenetrable, I was tempted to turn on the subtitles. The whole series gets bolloxed up (to badly use a Brit phrase) between science and medicine, with people in the refugee camp dying from a bad batch of vaccine, which may or may not be intentional.
The bottom line on The Last Enemy--now out on DVD and part of my Netflix viewings in the past 2 weeks--is it's a 5-hour mini-series that's about an hour too long. It goes off the rails in episode 4 when Stephen's ID is cancelled, showing just how torturous an ordeal that can be in the UK, at least in this near future tale. Stephen's trials and tribulations trying to hock a clock and get money for blood seem like filler. If the story was tighter and better-told, it would have been more enjoyable, but here's the other rub: This is a cautionary tale and in the end, this dystopian tale of the near future and the rigors and wrongs of a nation under constant surveillance defeats its own preachy premise. It ends on such a down note, my response was, "I spent 5 hours on this?" While it's well-acted and shot, in the end The Last Enemy is really it's own worst enemy.
One stray thought: Robert Carlyle, with his accent reined in a bit, would make a perfect new version of The Equalizer, if someone wanted to give up the ghost on the movie version that seems to never be coming out. Carlyle is a wormy little guy, and cleaned up and put in a suit like Edward Woodward, he'd be the perfect against-type casting for a revival of the TV series, set once again in New York City. Hell, I'll even give you the first episode's plot: A group of ripped-off investors pay The Equalizer to dump Bernie Madoff off the balcony of his kajillion-dollar penthouse. How's that for torn-from-the-headlines justice?
Comments