State of Play (BBC series)

State of Play is an excellent BBC political thriller mini-series and I thoroughly recommend that you watch it.

In fact you should watch it as soon as you can get your hands on it because Hollywood has got their paws on it and has made it into a movie. A movie starring Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck no less.

Actually ‘State of Play’ Hollywood style will probably be a better film than the majority of thrillers coming out of the US. The casting looks reasonable - Rachel McAdams as the junior reporter and Helen Mirren in the Bill Nighy role of the editor - but I can’t help but feel that they may very well make a shambles of it. For one thing, State of Play has an intelligent and intricate plot, not Hollywood’s strong point. While the six-part series isn’t incredibly fast-paced, the plot would take a huge amount of condensing to fit into a two hour movie and when they’ve added all the car chases, guns and fight scenes that are an obligatory part of US thrillers, there may not be much room for the twists and turns of the storyline. Or character development for that matter.

That’s really the worrying thing because State of Play is compelling viewing not because of the big over-arching plotline but because of the subtlety as well. It keeps you on your toes as a viewer not because of huge plot twists and an over-riding compulsion to find out who is behind the whole conspiracy, but because the small decisions characters make can have huge repercussions. Working out who is the big bad isn’t nearly so interesting as finding out about all the little bads along the way and how they got caught up through a mistake or two into something really nasty.

It’s not just the ‘bad guys’, although really such a distinction is pretty meaningless in the moral quagmire of politics and journalism, that are complex and sympathetic. The ‘good guys’, or at least the main characters who are investigating, are not perfect either. Bad but understandable decisions drive a great deal of the action of the show and it isn’t clearly sign-posted for the viewer that any particular action is the ‘right’ thing to do. The series has an excellent cast and you feel a great deal of sympathy for all the characters no matter what they have done or end up doing.

It is a political thriller but really the concepts are broader than just corruption and the media’s uneasy relationship with the law (both the law makers and the justice system). It’s about how far a person will go in pursuit of love, friendship, ambition or the truth, and what they do when those ideals are in conflict with each other.

It is worth watching the whole series for Bill Nighy’s hilarious, acerbic, ballsy editor who pragmatically juggles getting ‘the story’ with avoiding suicidal career decisions, and comfortably bends ethical and legal obligations of the press when necessary. His one-liners are often the best.

I can’t say much about the plot without getting into spoilers but found myself at the end of each episode desperate to watch the next, and it would have been easy to watch the whole series in one sitting if I had more hours free in the day.