Thanks for the memories!

Overrated and overhyped

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

I went to this for Benedict in the first place, but when I finished I found that the story was more exciting. Very good plot, every things were quite confusing in the first few episodes, and I didn't understand the whole thing until the last one. There could be some improvements in the way they delivered the story to make it more clear and intense. You need to be patient to wait for 2 or 3 episodes to get an idea of what's going on because they've been laying too much clues around and not connecting them till the last sec. They also spent quite a few shots on drawing the social background. But towards the end it was irresistible to see where the characters will end up despite their struggles. And at the last few scenes I did get horrid, thrilling feelings that the story tried to create. It made me so disgusted about what's happening in that fictional world and that's why I found this series quite nice.The cast was good. All actors/actresses were delivering fantastic performances. (And I am more than happy to see what a brilliant job that Benedict did in this). Overall, don't expect this show will be witty or delighting or full of fun. It followed the George Orwell "1984" and in a sense, dull, but still alarming. In my view it was unnecessarily lengthy, but not intolerable. So if you are after some kind of serious drama on political conspiracies, this one worth a try.

This is definitely worth watching if you are a fan of George Orwell's famous novel "1984". The series takes on much of the same material and ends in an equally depressing way. So if you are not bothered by the lack of a happy end, go ahead and watch this. Aside from the frustrating story, this does include some fabulous acting, though. Benedict Cumberbatch gave an Oscar-worthy performance. He really did all he could with his - admittedly - rather badly written character, Steven Ezard. It was very hard to emphasize with Steven because he was so unpredictable and not all of the inconsistencies could be chalked up to his mental state. But BC managed to draw you onto his side, at least. The script itself has some confusing dialogue and takes a long time to explain what was actually going on. It's okay that you have to keep guessing who's on what side but the key elements of the story and the main parties should have become clearer a lot sooner. Still, the time to review the series' issue is certainly here. Public surveillance and monitoring of individual citizens is not a distant vision any more like it was for George Orwell. It is very real and present at this date. Just think about smartphones. Or credit cards, bonus club cards,... Let's not even start with CCTV! We really ARE just one small step away from the scenario in this series and that is a system to combine and cross-reference all the data gathered through the various monitoring tools. If something like that would be found you'd be just where "The Last Enemy" begins. So, the series might be founded on frightening fiction that will probably become fact really fast, but it still should have ended on a more uplifting note. I do hope our future is not THAT bleak.

This is a superb conspiracy thriller series (5 hours) set in the immediate future, about the threat we all now face from the surveillance society, where there is no privacy left at all. In this series, a chilling new British surveillance system called T. I. A. (for Total Information Awareness) is being launched by the British Government, so that everything about everybody can be known by the Government at the click of a mouse. Since Britain is already the most monitored society on earth (one CCTV camera for every eleven people, for instance), it was correct to make the British Government the villains of this series, as their present mania for total surveillance is well known to everyone, and already surpasses anything the Stasi could ever have dreamed of, and in any case the current British Government is only supported now by about 15% of the population, and everybody is waiting for them to be thrown out in 2010. Whether the new Government will then dismantle any CCTV cameras is another matter, but at least ID cards will be cancelled and the DNA database of innocent people and children will be ordered progressively destroyed, though that process will take many years. In this series the lead character is played by a bumbling, goofy, indecisive and wimpish Benedict Cumberbach, who portrays a young mathematician who has won the Field Medal in mathematics (the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize) for a brilliant theorem. His former girlfriend is now the minister introducing T.I.A., and she wants to recruit him to speak out on its behalf. This involves his having access to its workings. He has an older brother whom he barely knows, and with whom he has never had friendly relations. This brother is in Afghanistan, where he is apparently killed by a bomb. However, this brother, played by Max Beesley, has not been killed after all and returns to Britain under an alias to investigate who tried to kill him. It is all connected with those scheming pharmaceutical companies and a devilish Government plan to inject nano-technological identifiers into the bloodstreams of everyone on earth for universal ID card readouts by detectors on every street corner. Lots of people get killed, because control freaks enjoy that. Meanwhile, the brother's beautiful and mysterious wife, played by the fascinating Anamaria Marinca (one of those rare girls who commands attention even when shorn of her hair to an alarming degree, so that if she were less alluring she would look like one of those girls who had their heads shaved at the Liberation of Paris for sleeping with the Nazis), falls for Cumberbatch. This is the one thing that is really hard to believe in the series, because Cumberbatch could not be less appealing to any gal, I should have thought. But there is no accounting for taste or for casting directors. There is a mysterious man played with intense menace by Robert Carlyle, who when he finally speaks turns out to have an impenetrably think Scottish accent. The minister ex-girl friend also has a strong Northern Ireland accent. Certainly every attempt was made to ensure that this series could not possibly sell in America, as no one there could conceivably understand a word several of the regionally accented actors say. I suppose this is what is called 'the multi-accentual society', guaranteeing that no one can understand anyone else. Maybe it is the only way to defeat mass surveillance, if you speak in an incomprehensible accent. Eva Birthistle is superb as the chirpy but chilling minister, and old pro Geraldine James (who has never failed to deliver) is utterly terrifying as a behind the scenes power-wielder who guards the gates to the Prime Minister's office and is capable of anything. It is all thoroughly convincing and gripping stuff. It is very much an edge-of-the-potato-couch experience. And it is really important, as the message is loud and clear and everybody needs to hear it, so tell all your friends.

Could have been good, but poorly done. Plot too hard to follow to keep anyone interested. Computer story utterly unreasonable. It had possibilities, as government surveillance, big brother, and 1984 are all too possible these days, in the name of "war on terror". But this show fails to deliverInsane scene where super secret high tech computer is tapped and guy had to bang on router network. Not once, but repeatedly over many minutes. Unwilling to suspend disbelief over that and many others.Amazing lack of production values, looks like the whole budget was for a half dozen large LCD computer monitors.