If the espionage battles of the future are going to be fought online, TV thrillers will have to reflect that fact, much as they might not want to. Cyber-attacks, cross-border malware and digital misinformation just aren’t especially televisual: whatever you do, you always end up with a speed-typing nerd muttering “Shit!” as gobbledegook scrolls across a monitor and red lights flash in the distance.
In 2022, Channel 4’s missable drama The Undeclared War tried to crack the problem by throwing heavyweight film-making pedigree at it. Peter Kosminsky, the esteemed director behind Wolf Hall and The Government Inspector, had evidently researched the back end out of the subject, presenting the details of an imagined campaign of Russian interference in Britain’s daily digital functionality – and, from there, the democratic process of an election – in a way that real-life sleepless nerds said was credible enough.
