The Undeclared War

Adrian Lester, Simon Pegg and the Mark Rylance star in a glacially paced show where GCHQ staff seem like bored office workers, and the one-note dialogue ...

Kosminsky’s involvement presumably explains the appearance of such heavyweights as Adrian Lester (prime minister Andrew Makinde, who apparently ousted Boris 15 months ago), Alex Jennings (head of GCHQ, David Neal) and – still to come in later episodes – Mark Rylance (John Yeabsley, a former GCHQ asset brought back to help them deal with the attack). At the moment – and only one episode was available for review – they don’t have much to do. Alas, The Undeclared War has taken the other route and is clearly designed to induct us all into a new field of worry. And you should be careful what you wish for if, like me, you were hoping The Undeclared War would deliver the perfect dose of quality hokum and escapism from the real world as it crashes and burns around us.

Hannah Khalique-Brown and Adrian Lester also star in Peter Kosminsky's ambitious but flawed Channel 4 series.

Politically, too, the series is muddled. Fanciful vignettes dramatising the coding process are particularly naff (we see Saara strolling through library corridors, solving puzzles and opening doors to represent what’s going on in her computer). But there are also little moments that ring totally false. Cyberattacks are a very contemporary but widely under-acknowledged real-world danger; the idea of a series shedding light on our country’s response to them is intriguing. The acting is stilted and unconvincing; the cast are not helped by a witless, clunky script. Against the backdrop of this we have an unsteady political landscape: in the world of The Undeclared War, Boris Johnson has been usurped by Andrew Makinde (Adrian Lester) – the country’s first Black PM, and a Tory – who fears the electoral ramifications a cyberattack could have. It’s a shame, therefore, that the end product doesn’t have anything worthwhile to say about pretty much any of them.

The Undeclared War – the gripping new cyber thriller from Peter Kosminsky, starring Oscar-winner Mark Rylance and Mission Impossible's Simon Pegg, ...

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Hannah Khalique-Brown - who plays Saara in the Channel 4 cyber thriller - has discussed the season premiere's "too good to be true" ending.

"My heart was racing all the time, because it's so intense... The Undeclared War is airing on Channel 4. I think there was a line [in the script], 'She's never been more alone', or something like that.

'The Undeclared War' star on learning to code, coping with anxiety, and her deep appreciation of Derren Brown.

I was going to say Hey Ya! by Outkast because I did that with my friends on a camping trip once, but we actually got booed. Bit rogue, but my celeb idol is Derren Brown. I love that man and all of his work and writing. I have too many acting idols to list them all, but music-wise it would be Lana Del Rey, whose music and writing has been a huge part of my life for about a decade. Strictly Come Dancing. I think dancing is one of the most joyous things in the world. You can kind of just forget all of your troubles when you have a problem in front of you and you’re just trying to solve it,” she tells. But honestly, I am constantly watching films and series. “I’m a sucker for magic, I’m like a little kid. It’s been such a source of companionship to me.” “I decided to teach myself how to code,” she tells me via Zoom. “I learnt two programming languages. “Just because it’s so unlikely to go your way.” A humble confession, especially for a rising star. me. “It feels like all your problems float into this outer bubble, and you’re in this inner bubble. Watching the tense series now, it is hard to imagine anyone but Khalique-Brown in the role of Parvin, but it wasn’t a given.

The Channel 4/Peacock drama series stars Simon Pegg and newcomer Hannah Khalique-Brown, who plays a genius hacker on work experience at GCHQ.

Enter Saara, whose first day on the job coincides with the attack. When Britain is the victim of a targeted cyberattack, she's ideally placed to prove herself. Of course, Saara isn't really defying gravity - at least not in the physical world.