Bombshell is a 7-episode series about life in a British military barracks, centering around the barracks' officers and recruit cadets, both male and female. Billed as "lifting the lid on the modern British army," the series starts fairly strong but ultimately disappoints as it increasingly descends into (sometimes laughable) soap opera.
There is Major Welling (Jeremy Sheffield), who despite losing a leg in Kosovo during the Balkan War, is eminently capable and unflappable as various dramas unfold around him; the only thing he can't seem to really control is his acerbic, aristocratic - and alcoholic - wife, Valerie (Lucy Cohu), who for some baffling reason views his loss of limb as a critical blow to her husband's ability to rise through the ranks - and to her cherished ambitions of becoming a general's wife. The Major is also having a serious affair with the barracks' female Captain, Jenna Marstan (Zoe Lucker).
This dramatic trio form the central core of the series, with subplots about a cadet who has entered the army to escape a dubious past (Chris Geere), a female recruit who bests everyone else in her battery (Rosie Marcel), a talented but tortured bombadier (Robert Beck), the social-climbing wife of the barracks' lance bombadier (Emma Rydal), a local councilman toff who develops a keen interest in Captain Marstan, and the Welling's defiantly wayward daughter (Alex Wilton Regan), who makes a surprise late entry into the last three episodes.
Bombshell has whiffs of classic "Upstairs, Downstairs" comparisons / tensions between the classes - here, officers vs. Cadets - but these are never really explored. Similarly, some of the episode plots touch on socially relevant issues - such as asylum seekers facing deportation, a Gulf War veteran plagued by maladies the Army refuses to acknowledge - but these are employed almost exclusively to create drama and to serve as the foil for our main characters to (rather superficially) react to.
As is typical of most British TV, the acting is uniformly good, even as the writing descends into mawkishness or downright unbelievability. Lucy Cohu is the (sometimes scene-chewing) standout here as the Major's wife, who goes from chillingly snotty to increasingly desperate as her marriage falls apart, her beautiful face splotched with tears. Zoe Lucker is appealing and solid as Captain Marstan, while Jeremy Sheffield's Major Welling remains handsomely stolid, even as his behavior strays further and further afield from the unflappable fellow we meet at the series' start. Robert Beck, Emma Rydal, and Alex Wilton Regan also put in believable turns, as does the unfortunate Bertie Carvel, who is largely wasted as the stodgy, semi-clueless Lieutenant eager to pick up with Captain Marstan should his rivals ever get out of the way.
The writers of Bombshell clearly expected to have a job well past Episode 7, as the series abruptly ends at a major cliffhanging point which would logically have been followed by at least a few more episodes, if not another whole season. That none of this transpired is, however, a blessing, since the show's solid cast simply cannot rescue this semi-BOMB from failure.
