Edge Of Darkness  

Matt's review of "House of Cards" at Code Three a little while ago prompted me to go and buy a copy and watch it again, having enjoyed my first viewing of it a long time ago.

That done, my thoughts turned to other classic British TV series - of which "Edge Of Darkness" was one of the best (other reviews can be found at Wikipedia and DVD Times). It has aged remarkably well, and a lot of the underlying themes tend to fit pretty well into the world view of your typical peak oiler (particularly some of the ideas in the final episode "Fusion").

One portion of the plot which has become a bit more confused in the intervening period is James Lovelock's recent conversion to supporting nuclear power, as his Gaia hypothesis influences the story quite heavily.

Recommended.

This six-part drama serial was transmitted on BBC2 in Winter 1985 and repeated on BBC1 in three parts, on consecutive evenings, just ten days after its BBC2 run ended. This remarkably swift repeat highlighted the impact and significance of this five-hour nuclear thriller, broadcast at a time when nuclear politics were firmly on the political and public agenda. Critically acclaimed, the drama was also very popular, with an average audience of four million on BBC2 and double that for the BBC1 repeat. Edge of Darkness received four BAFTA awards, including Best Drama Series/Serial.

A drama which begins, then, on a human scale, with Craven mourning his daughter's death, gradually opens out to embrace national and international issues as it moves from an investigative film noir to take on the conventions of a political thriller, before transforming into a nuclear thriller with implications of global apocalypse. For Kennedy Martin this was a deliberate strategy, facilitated by the serial form: "The art is to start with a familiar idea and take the audience with you on a plane, so that when they look down they are thousands of miles above the Earth." For a drama concerned above all with the future of the planet, this analogy is particularly apt, and the continuing relevance in the 21st century of the issues Edge of Darkness addresses confirms it as one of the great works of television drama.