It’s been kept firmly under wraps, but now TV fans can take a first look at The State, Peter Kosminsky’s drama about the harsh realities of life for Britons who join Islamic State.
The show, from the creator of the BBC’s award-winning Wolf Hall, takes on one of the “most troubling issues of our age”, depicting in unflinching detail the journey of four British women and men who travel to Raqqa in Syria and get caught up in the increasingly bloody regime. The characters range from a single mother and junior doctor who wants to help Isis “flourish”, to a teenage boy who has been radicalised online.
Kosminsky, who is known for drawing on extensive research in his TV programmes, spent months meeting those who left their lives behind to commit to the caliphate.
He says: “Isis and its adherents have caused pain and suffering the world over. But unless we understand why some of our young men and women chose to give up the lives they were living and travel to Syria, why men and women born and brought up in our liberal democracies opt to lay down those lives in its name, how can we ever hope to combat its nihilistic creed?”
The director is no stranger to controversy. He gave a searing speech at the 2016 Bafta television awards, after winning best drama for Wolf Hall, in which he attacked the Conservative government for trying to “eviscerate” Britain’s independent broadcasters: “This is scary stuff, folks, and not something I thought I’d see in my lifetime in this country.”
Government proposals to appoint the majority of members on a BBC board, Kosminsky said, could turn it into a state broadcaster a bit like “those bastions of democracy Russia and North Korea”. The BBC broadcast of the speech removed this reference before it was aired.
Kosminsky’s shows have long tackled scandalous subjects: he vilified New Labour in The Project, explored the Iraq dossier row and the death of Dr David Kelly in The Government Inspector, and also wrote The Promise, a love story set amid the Israel and Palestine conflict.
The State will air this August in the UK on Channel 4 and worldwide on National Geographic.
