COBRA
You may be aware that I am a fan of apocalypse fiction. You know, zombies. A lot of people don’t really think of the creatures that way, but that’s what they are. The apocalypse appeals to me because if done right it’s a powerful framing device to talk about important things in the world. Zombies are the best used overall, but there are other methods of achieving interesting world destruction. The best are ones that are actually possible. Super volcanoes are woefully underused, possibly because at least in America there is one in the middle of the country. If that ever goes off there won’t be too much survivor fun. Another popular method is extreme sun poisoning, otherwise known as EMP.
There are many books that have explored the effects of an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP), typically of the Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) type. I expect that’s because the CMEs are sudden and intense. You know, more dramatic. They’re unstoppable and massively destructive. The problem is, almost no one has the nerve to depict them as destructively as they should be. I reviewed a book series that does do them justice. Too bad the author’s politics and chauvinism are tough to swallow. Well yeah, I’ve read the series two (maybe more) times. There is a sapphic series with the same premise, and yes I’ve read it a few times. That one doesn’t take the destruction far enough, though.
There are few tv shows or movies that go for the EMP or CME event to create apocalyptic chaos, so I was happy to finally to see a British show called COBRA on PBS this weekend. Sure, they bleeped out the bad words, even on the subtitles, but I was jazzed to finally see this show. COBRA is an anacronym for Cabinet Office Briefing Room (the A? *shrug) where all the most powerful people in Britain come together to deal with huge threats. They are convened and warned that the sun is about to vomit on Earth and there is brainstorming about what to do, then some slow and halfhearted reactions followed by a big pulse hitting the world.
The reason we don’t often see the deep dive of a CME apocalypse is because in the real world it would kill everything electrical and people today cannot even comprehend how that would be. For a zombie film, you block off a street for a day’s filming and blow some newspapers down the street. (And what the heck are we going to do now that newspapers are gone the way of the dodo?!?) To portray a suddenly dark England takes more ingenuity and cgi. I love that shivery moment when the lights blink out and don’t come back on. They almost did it well for London, except it showed segments going dark instead of the whole thing all at once. That was the moment I knew they weren’t going to get it right.
There was no montage of ordinary people having their lives changed abruptly and severely when the electricity does not come back on. No shots of people walking down the street on the phone and then their phone dies. No shots of cars dying and crashing because most people aren’t strong enough to turn the wheel or stomp on the brakes to overcome loss of power assisted features. No shots of people falling down the stairs to get out of their high rise business office because THE EMERGENCY LIGHTS WOULD BE KILLED TOO. Filmmakers either don’t get it or are afraid to face the fact that an event that kills everything electrical will, well, kill everything electrical. Unless it’s protected by something like a faraday cage. These leaders of the country can barely stop sniping at each other to do more at their meeting than acknowledge it might be a bad thing about to happen, much less order some mesh thrown over the “transformers” that are their main concern.
Then it does happen, they glance up at the flickering lights and get on their cell phones to make a million calls and not ever have to charge the phones – that would be dead and so would the cell towers that carry the calls – even if there was electricity to plug into. There’s a big deal made out of having only three transformers to cover a four transformer country, but no mention of the miles of burned up wires needing to be replaced as well. One hospital is shown out of power, one prison as well. One major plane crash. There could be montages showing more of all those things. CGI, people! But we get a lot of time spent on a political scandal and a clandestine love affair. This show is a fusion of political power playing set in a supposed dangerous and all inclusive physical crisis. All the problems are simplified and slowed down to draw out the danger, and steps taken to mitigate problems are half-hearted and slowly done.
I was bummed. I watched three whole episodes and then went online to read how the story plays out and it was more of the same. Not enough deep dive into the actual tough and wide reaching aspects of electricity becoming a super scarce resource. Too much political and romantic soap opera that robs the show of time for social commentary or actual drama inspired by the end of the world as we know it. It’s reminded me of why I stopped watching sports back in the day they decided to inject drama into it. Sports is inherently dramatic, so the injections were more of an irritant. The apocalypse is a pretty dramatic concept all by itself, so injecting the soap opera stuff is also irritating.
I should have turned the channel once I saw it stars Robert Carlyle (Once Upon a Time, Star Gate Universe). He’s a good actor but I cannot stand the characters he plays. This is a serious show with good production values and a lot of great actors. The evil Harry Cooper type character made me gnash my teeth but by golly his was a great role played well. But I just couldn’t get over how little time they actually spent with what should be a way more severe event than depicted. You would probably enjoy it more than me, but if you don’t, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Available on: PBS (free), apple tv and prime video
LINKS:
CFR: In Addition
Howdy. I don’t do the apocalypse. Not into, don’t want it, spent enough time in high school with my buddies discussing how we would walk to Ground Zero if they dropped the bombs. We weren’t dumb – we didn’t want to suffer.
So I won’t watch this because my blood pressure will go up. LOLOL on me. I need some more joy and triumph in my life. Also me without the Internet is not something anyone wants to see. Trust me. No way on that one.
Thanks for watching this, Cranky. And yes I will watch zombie movies with you ’cause slaying zombies is always a good idea. 😉
Chick Flicking Reviews 