Complicit.

Last night (17/2/13) Britain's Channel 4 showed a genuinely incredibly acted feature length drama entitled "Complicit." Essentially a two hander it was carried by David Oyelowo and Arshar Ali. It centred around Olyelowo's MI5 officer "Edward Ekubo" being sent to Egypt to interview Ali's British Muslim terrorism suspect "Waleed Ahmed." On arrival Ekubo learns that Ahmed is being tortured by Egypt's State Security Service.  Ekubo then examines his own attitudes towards to torture while the viewer is left to question whether his judgement is being clouded by some problems he's been having at work such as being overlooked for promotion.

The story was a none too subtle and none too accurate re-telling of the Abdel Hakim Belhadj story. For those of you who don't know Belhadj was an Jihadist who was detained by the CIA in Thailand before being handed over to Britain's MI6 who gave him to Mummar Qaddafi to 'play with' as part of UKPM's Tony Blair's infamous "deal in the desert." Since Qaddafi's fall Belhadj has gone on to be the head of the Tripoli Fighting Group (essentially the Libyan Army) and leader of the Homeland Party whilst being heavily linked to both MI6 and factions within Libya's ever changing range of militias. His 'kidnapping' by the Zintan Brigades was of course a British ruse to clean his reputation. He is currently suing the British Government over claims that the MI6 officers who transferred him from the CIA to Qaddafi were complicit in his torture by both. The British public will be expected to pick a side in this soap-opera. The references to Egypt and Mubarak's Central Security Force were pretty obvious while the torture scenes were reminiscent of the portrayal of the Saudi military in the film "The Kingdom."

Apart from making everyone in Britain talk about their attitudes towards torture while I was talking about Rihanna's appearance at London Fashion Week this was essentially a propaganda piece for Britain's MI5. The main message was that it is really difficult to uncover terrorist plots so we should cut them some slack. This was mainly illustrated by things such as sound being re-edited so you could never be quite sure what the people under surveillance were saying and it never being explained if the term 'Bed Linen' was actually code for 'Ricin.' This need for such a high level of attention to detail meant that the drama wasn't really aimed at stoners.

As a result I can only actually remember one scene which saw Ekubo questioning Ali to find out if he'd received the 'Bed Linen' from Yemen and whether that 'Bed Linen' was actually 'Ricin.' At one point Ali asked if "It was a crime to shop with people you want to have your money rather then shopping on the British High Street?" This was of course an attempt to promote discussion about companies such as Amazon who take business away from the British High Street but are based outside of Britain meaning they don't pay UK taxes.

Shortly afterwards Ekubo went into an almost word for word recantation of a speech given by Peter Firth's "Harry Pearce" to Martine McCutcheon's "Tash" in Series 3 episode 2 of "Spooks" which starred David  Oyelowo. In the past week Martine McCutcheon has filed for bankruptcy. While I'm not familiar with the case details an unexpectedly large tax bill is often the reason for this sort of bankruptcy. Apart from raising the point that celebrities who think they're rich can suddenly discover they're not this was an attempt to raise the point that Her Majesties Revenue and Customs (HMRC/tax offices) does sometimes think it can act as a law unto itself.

Apart from that the portrayal of MI5's offices as similar to any other police/NHS/low level Civil Service offices promoted discussion about all the dodgy conspiracies they've been involved in over the years. The references to office politics, disciplinary panels and grievance procedures were designed to make the viewer think about any office based disputes they may have had in their careers.

Tonight Channel 4 will be treating us to episode 2 of season 2 of "Black Mirror." I've not seen it yet but sci-fi inspired apparently it's about a young black woman who is going through some terrible personal trauma but nobody will help her because they've all been turned into mysterious 'onlookers.'

Somehow I doubt the Queen with an Real Navy will be watching. But if you can't shake that one off you probably don't deserve to be there.

21:50 on 18/2/13.