Hannah Khalique-Brown is currently acting her socks off opposite Simon Pegg in season two of The Undeclared War on Channel 4. She plays Saara Parvin, a student whizzkid on placement at GCHQ when a Russian cyber-attack threatens the country; a difficult role which Khalique-Brown — herself something of a whizzkid — excels at. “Before the first season I learned to programme languages,” she says. “And I learned coding because I thought if she’s a coding prodigy, but I can’t understand a word of what’s she’s saying, I’m not going to be able to learn it.”
Season two has picked up right after the last one (“Though fans of season one may notice we’re wearing different clothes on a slightly different set”), with Russian planes seemingly heading for the UK and the discovery that there is a “mole” among them. The tension ramps up further with an opening 10-minute one-shot — “I’ve shot the thing and when I was watching it my heart was still racing” — which was hard to get through, particularly since she and Pegg get on too well: “We’re like kids in assembly trying not to laugh.”
