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I was very disturbed by the fact that the 'mad mullah' character seemed to be played by reflect himself, obscured by a beard of secrets. "Perhaps he went to the trouble of auditioning in order to share the screen with his hero, Siddig", I thought. But anyway.
This was in many ways a re-run of the "Tony Head & the anarchists" episode, structurally - charismatic and brilliant but potentially untrustworthy rogue spy infiltrates a tabloid editor's wet dream of a proto terrorist group, keeps everyone guessing about his true allegiances, knocks the wind out of Tom after he tries to bring him in, then ends up dead while Tom lies on the floor and groans "nooooo...." (I missed the final few minutes, btw - anything important happen post-explosion?) This time round, the guy's ultimately on "our" side, and he's caught in the blast of someone else's suicide rather than just going ahead with his own, but the result is pretty similar. And he and Tom even had very similar political conversations sitting on a bench - which leads me to suspect that there's a common theme of "one way or another, the lefty idealist always ends up dead" going on... There's no getting round how reactionary this show can be.
But then, Tom's brand of smug, patriotic, public school Englishness seemed to be exposed to be pretty useless this week, too. He admits that he can't 'read' Siddig's character, let alone people with whom he has less in common culturally. He's also prone to highly morally dubious acts which don't really even get 'results', such as when he essentially bullies a traumatised kid who's been half-brainwashed by both sides into having a brain haemorrhage (after a pathetic attempt to reassure/console him - "you have our respect now", urgh, quite creepy). I think the show really needs to play up the morally fucked side of this character even more, and also push him closer to that nervous breakdown which is so clearly in the post. More death, failure and abandonment for Tom, please.
What's with all these new third-tier characters (new recruits, crap love interests)? I smell enemy agents. It'd be really great if one of the main three turned out to be a mole, but I suspect I'm dreaming... |
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