THE POLICY OF POWER. INTO THE 'SECRET STATE'

Amidst the horror of an industrial explosion, Gabriel Byrne begins his quest to find the truth in the new thriller SECRET STATE. Image: CHANNEL 4.

Making a welcome, and long overdue, return to US shores after his two season critical success in HBO's psychiatry drama IN TREATMENT, Gabriel Byrne re-enters the political thriller genre with CHANNEL 4's latest glossy four part mini-series starting this Wednesday night: SECRET STATE. Based around former Labour MP Chris Mullin's popular and controversial eighties political thriller A VERY BRITISH COUP (which itself was also made by FOUR into a very successful 1988 series starring another fine Irish character actor, Ray McAnally), STATE sees Byrne playing Deputy Prime Minister Tom Dawkins, a thoughtful, good intentioned man- a rare breed who would be totally out of place in real-life Parliament!- caught up in a webs of lies, murder and political/establishment intrigue after the unexpected destruction of a small town in the Teeside area, caused by an industrial accident from a powerful international petrochemical company, whose links to the world of big business, enterprise and politics reaches into the very heart of British authority. A further horrific situation sees Dawkins becoming Prime Minister, where he soon finds himself in an isolated place as he tries to unravel and expose the huge cover-up taking place around him, and stop the escalating power games of the big companies and corrupt officials who ultimately have such frightening control over the country and the world we live in. Dawkins may be the ultimate player in the game against the almost overpowering capitalist threat, but are other forces manipulating him into a scenario of which even he has no control?

With the kind of storytelling that wouldn't be out of places in today's newspaper headlines, of which it's overall story looks unlikely of having any kind of happy ending for the crusading figure of Dawkins,  the idea of a modern remake of COUP looks interesting. In my book, Byrne's previous work in the excellent eighties British thriller set in Fleet Street during the end of the Cold War, DEFENCE OF THE REALM, will take a lot to beat, but despite a rather condemning review from THE GUARDIAN newspaper, which declared SECRET STATE as glossy tosh that's totally implausible and more like an hysterical episode of SPOOKS, I'm looking forward to seeing this. At least it's one more drama series with a top draw cast (including the always good value for money Charles Dance and Gina McKee) and behind the scenes team to help shore up FOUR's often inconsistent quality output, instead of more crappy reality TV!