Tense and confusing but I wasn’t truly captured by this fake video drama: JAN MOIR reviews the finale to BBC drama The Capture
The Capture (BBC One) finished last night and it was almost a relief. Who was mad? Who was bad? Who was sad? Who was glad? But most importantly – who cared?
I did, a bit. At its best, this six-part conspiracy drama was tense and confusing, like a spider trying to put on crampons in the dark.
The plot? Must we? It centred on the frightening spectre of police and security services faking video footage to ensure convictions. MI5, the CIA and the Met Police all seemed to be involved in this noxious process they called ‘correction’, which manipulates – or ‘corrects’ – CCTV footage to help keep terrorists off the street. ‘Not fake evidence. It’s truth re-enacted.’
Did these dastardly ends justify the immoral means? Some operatives seemed to think so.
The Capture (BBC One) finished last night and it was almost a relief. Who was mad? Who was bad? Who was sad? Who was glad? But most importantly – who cared?
Detective Inspector Rachel Carey (Holliday Grainger) most certainly did not. She got in quite a huff about it. But only when she wasn’t storming around in a mood, as if her eyebrow wax appointment had just been cancelled.
Meanwhile, lawyers, cops, terrorists, activist groups – everyone but the general public – seemed to know what was going on.
‘The public are content in their ignorance and much better off that way,’ said chilly Detective Superintendent Gemma Garland (Lia Williams).
Oh really? It was a disturbing and cynical statement and made one wonder if The Capture was a sober examination of a corrupted future or a shrill whistle about what is going on now.
The series’ writer and director Ben Chanan said he learned a ‘lot’ about counter-terrorism when making documentaries a few years ago. He remembered how video evidence was often crucial to a case and also the most effective way of securing a conviction.
Detective Inspector Rachel Carey (Holliday Grainger) most certainly did not. She got in quite a huff about it
But as visual effects became more sophisticated, would the opportunities to manipulate footage also increase exponentially? Chanan thought that this dilemma would make ‘an interesting drama’.
So even in our fake news world ‘correction’ does not really exist. Not yet anyway.
At the heart of The Capture – doctored CCTV footage – was the reason why a soldier who was jailed for a crime he didn’t commit seemed quite happy about it – because it was pay-off relating to an earlier incident when he killed a surrendering Taliban fighter in Afghanistan.
Lance Corporal Shaun Emery (Callum Turner) pleaded guilty to the abduction and manslaughter of his barrister – Hannah Roberts (Laura Haddock) – even though he had nothing to do with her death. But he had been guilty of murder during the skirmish in Helmand when he panicked and shot the insurgent on the battlefield, but had wrongly been cleared in court.
At the heart of The Capture – doctored CCTV footage – was the reason why a soldier who was jailed for a crime he didn’t commit seemed quite happy about it
The uncomfortable message seemed to be that these two crimes were of a moral equivalence and that even Emery felt he deserved this punishment.
God forbid that a British squaddie should ever be treated with empathy in a Left-leaning BBC drama instead of being depicted as little better than a state-sponsored assassin.
The remarkable thing about The Capture was that nearly everyone in it was horrible – from DI Carey’s passive/aggressive sister to the CIA boss (played by former Bond girl Famke Janssen) who seemed to be based on Karren Brady from The Apprentice.
Any minute, I thought, she was going to shout at some poor bloke in a Topman suit for getting too emotional during the doughnut-making task in the kitchen.
Even a lovely, cuddly teddy bear turned out to be a secret camera. What a sneak.
The uncomfortable message seemed to be that these two crimes were of a moral equivalence and that even Emery felt he deserved this punishment
Yet despite the serious issues raised by some of this drama, the driving force around The Capture seemed to be the establishment of DI Carey as a top female crime fighter and a woman worthy of future television exposure. To this end, other characters were frequently called upon to holler clues about her personality.
‘She’s a good detective, smart and principled,’ yelled Commander Danny Hart (Ben Miles). ‘F***ing millennial,’ growled CIA spook Frank Napier, played by Rolf-alike Ron Perlman. ‘She’s got balls,’ muttered Garland.
But has she got a second series? That is the key question.
The remarkable thing about The Capture was that nearly everyone in it was horrible
As this paper’s resident queen of crime, I have to say that I not impressed with Rachel’s detective skills.
Week after week, clues rained down like hailstones upon her pretty head, only to be ignored.
Much time was spent establishing her as someone who is bruised by emotional damage because millennials are nobodies unless they have suffered.
You can see that she feels she has a deeper duty, that she must frown and bear it as a future as an MI5 operative unfurls before her.
‘When can I start?’ were her last words in the final scene. Where do I begin?
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