Cerca de tu enemigo

You know comedy shows like Harry & Paul or Mitchell & Webb or Armstrong & Miller do 1940s smarminess? Well, this is like that, only not very funny. It's only funny in as much as the acting is so bad you can't really believe it. Stand-out bad performance goes to Jim Sturgess as an even cheesier version of Pierce Brosnan. Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy, as he is better known) comes on like the "Suits You" tailors from the Fast Show. The cut-class accents everyone is putting on are cracked and blemished, taking you out of the story. All the characters are clichéd. We get the noble lady of the night, the sassy American jazz singer. Everything about this show is just so awful, apart from Phoebe Fox who is a center of calm in an otherwise farcical maelstrom of nonsense. So we have to turn away from the plot, the acting, and the script, and look instead at the physical components. From the beginning, we see that everyone's clothes are brand new and show no signs of wear, straight from the tailor shop. The military uniforms are clean, new, and without any dirt. The sets also have a fake feeling about them. Look at Foyle's War to see how this type of show should be made. Had to stop watching after 30 minutes.

I expect this will annoy some people and if so all well and good. Reading the negative reviews of Poliakoff's recent BBC drama I was apt to think that the reviewers were likely to be from a particular demographic: white, middle aged and ( this is a long shot) Brexit voters. It seems to me that they have completely misunderstood the whole point of this brilliant drama. It is indeed stylistically quirky, stilted in its language and takes a long time to get to its real points. However, it is a wonderful journey and well worth the seven hours it takes to get there. Far from being poorly acted, as several people state, it is quite brilliantly acted and huge talents like Lindsay Duncan and Alfred Molina are far from wasted. Moreover there are new talents being revealed here. I think that the reason several reviewers hate it so much is that it is a cultured and deliberately nuanced piece of drama that demands the audience pay attention and read between the lines. For it is not really about the 1940s at all! It is about now. It is about the racism and bigotry of the time in which we live. The intolerance of difference and tendency to avoid thinking in our society. The moral dilemmas of the central characters are not simply those of the 1940s where murderers got away with things because the British, Americans and Russians wanted to use their knowledge to create weapons of mass destruction. Those weapons are not only still with us but pose a threat that may be even greater than in the Cold War era. It is about power in age age when bigotry, racism and fear are ever present. The efforts of some to create a Europe and international community of cooperation are placed in jeopardy by the ignorance of those who don't want to think, don't wish to explore the past for what it can teach us and who simply want the crap of the vast majority of media output we are presented with on TV, film and the Internet. If you can't see that you have totally misunderstood the point of Poliakoff's work.

This highly stylised drama examines how morality is distorted by the politics of war, government and commercial interest. Each character represents an attitude or moral standpoint as they struggle to come to terms with the new post war priorities. Close To the Enemy resonates with the moral dilemmas of the times in which we live now through the perspective of post WWII Britain. It is beautifully crafted and thought provoking in a style not dissimilar to Dennis Potter. It is not really an historical drama, more an allegory. We are living through turbulent times, all the more so if you are in the Middle East, Africa or any of the many countries now suffering from exploitation and suppression. Poliakoff invites those of us who are more fortunate to consider who is really in control and examine theirs and our morals and motives.I love it!

This is so awful. I have kept watching in the hope it would improve but have totally lost interest. First of all I was thrown by the Game of Thrones actor and Bates Motel actor appearing. Kept wondering whether I was in the wrong programme. I was also watching Philip Glenister in another programme running just before this. Confused.com.

The episodes are one long slog after another and not at all convincing. Terrible accents and acting from what are usually good actors. But then again with no decent material can you really blame them?

No idea why Poliakoff has any sort of reputation to be honest. I have seen nothing of his to write home about but here we are again with a lavish but drawn out boring and badly written production.

There is nothing that seems right about it.

This may not have been the best drama ever produced, an understatement. But it does seem to have tried to as believably as possible show just how the British authorities excused themselves from pursuing the worst criminals this world has yet seen, in a stupid vainglorious attempt to claw back their faded imperial grandeur. We may sneer at the idea that this happened. It did. With the flesh still rotting on the murdered peoples corpses those in power in Britain waved away the smell and got on with business like nothing had happened.

So if this made some true blue Brits uncomfortable and compelled them to write angry hateful reviews, then it did its purpose as a piece of drama very well. So anyone who felt it necessary to jump online to write a tirade has been made to feel outrage by what they "claimed" to be poor work or "worthless" or "a waste of money". If it was why did it move you so? Why not just change the channel or go watch YouTube?