Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Holiday Grainger, Lia Williams, Ron Perlman, Ben Miles, Killian Scott, Nigel Lindsey, Paapa Essiedu, Indira Varma, Hugh Quarshie, Andrew Buchan, Isabella Brownson, Linus Rache, Jonathan Aris, Daisy Waterstones, Tessa Wong, Andy Nyman, Amanda Drew, Joe Dempsie, Adrian Rawlins, Natalie Dew.
The future envisioned by George Orwell has been exceeded in its desire to subjugate the masses, what is in its place in the third decade of the 21st Century is something even more hideous, a price paid with the vanity of ego and the fear installed at every drop every headline, and with all the power of surveillance and technology at its disposal…this is the future adapted to control a population afraid of its own possibility to fight back.
The third series of the impressive drama The Capture shows that the Correction Programme that had been revealed to be a corruption of the British public’s natural desire for justice is nothing compared to that which sits at the heart of government and its military officers, a system so complex, so much more than artificial intelligence, that it can hold anyone to account with consequences beyond the ordinary person’s comprehension.
The attention to the detail at hand by the production of the team as Rachel Carey, played with unnerving consummate skill by Holliday Grainger, finds her life spiralling out of control as she finds herself pushed to a point where she is the only one she can trust, even former allies seem to be building attacks against her beliefs and truth. This is made worse when a new commander is thrust upon her in the form of Noah Pierson, and her only supporter with any true power, the Home Secretary Issac Turner, is assassinated in front of her.
The point of The Capture is undeniably underlined by the sense of facelessness of the machine, that whilst there are humans employing the order, they are there just as a way to despise the nature of the inevitable. It is the machine itself that represents our downfall, that what we give way to today as we suggest progress, it is nothing more chains and shackles, that pound you want to spend, denied because the machine says you are irresponsible…that day trip to see your parents, forbidden because of something you said in passing as a joke.
This is the price you will pay, and as the final moments dawn upon Ms. Carey, it is the truth that will be the victim.
With incredible support from Killian Scott, Lia Williams, Ron Perlman, Ben Miles, and Linus Roache, in arguably his most absorbing ever role on television, The Capture reflects, pinpoints with exactness the issue that faces us, not in the future, not tomorrow, but at this very moment.
Ian D. Hall