Dirty Bomb on BBC 1

mike65

Anyone see tonights BBC1 drama Dirty Bomb? Thought it was pretty good if completly predictible. While its proberly a coincidence of timing (bearing in mind stuff gets commisioned at different times by different ppl) there sure has been alot of doom and terror in the drama schedules lately.

Mike.

flogen

mike65 wrote:

Anyone see tonights BBC1 drama Dirty Bomb? Thought it was pretty good if completly predictible. While its proberly a coincidence of timing (bearing in mind stuff gets commisioned at different times by different ppl) there sure has been alot of doom and terror in the drama schedules lately.

Mike.

hmmm, missed it myself, I have a problem with shows like that for some reason, some "what ifs" are interesting, such as shows that cover what if the past was different, but these kind of predictions shows dont appeal.

what do you mean by a lot of doom and gloom? (and maybe this is better suited to TV, unless its media representation of things like this that you wanted to get at, in which case thats fine )

flogen

mike65

flogen wrote:

what do you mean by a lot of doom and gloom?

flogen

Well in the last 3 weeks we've also had Hamburg Cell on C4, Crisis Command on BBC2, another 3 part terror thriller on BBC2 called the Grid and Eastenders on BBC1 Oh and Spooks is comming back soon I think.

Mike.

flogen

mike65 wrote:

Well in the last 3 weeks we've also had Hamburg Cell on C4, Crisis Command on BBC2, another 3 part terror thriller on BBC2 called the Grid and Eastenders on BBC1 Oh and Spooks is comming back soon I think.

Mike.

I suppose you're right, but tis the nature of the beast... what the people fear the most they'll watch the most.
It's a bit amoral I suppose, but many of these shows will be packaged as "this could happen to you" type programmes, when they are really just tapping into the publics current fears for money (while simultaniously encouraging that fear to unrealistic levels).
Why are Tom Clancy books so popular? Because he wrote about the cold war and a fight between America and Communism, something that in 1984 was still in the minds of many people (even though at that point the cold war was thawing).
I'm trying to think of some terrorist related movies out at the moment, but there have to be some... or at least coming out. Explotiation is all it really is

flogen

chewy

the story didn't seem to last very long but did you hear that story about scotland yard arresting four men on suspicion of trying to acquire a dirty bomb... turns out the infamous "fake sheik" from the sunday world tried to entrap them into buying red mercury? ( which some say doesn't exist?)...

i find it terrifying that the sunday world is left to do this, or do the police have to arrest these guys anyway even if its embarrsing for them to be led to them by the fake sheik...?

alot of these arrest seem to be entrapement or stories that turn out to exgerrated like the arms dealer in america and the ricin found in england

The Muppet

This is a very real threat. The UK gov are taking it seriously and conditioning their Ctizens to expect it and informing them how to react when it does happen.

AT least its taking a serious approach to the worst case scenario in contrast the one we got with Mr Jacobs advising us to take Iodine tables none of us had and which were out of date shortly after we got them.

I found last nights programme interesting and I watched the question and answer question that followed it. I found some of the questions from the public very pedantic "like questioning why there was only one Islamic Police officer portrayed in the programme". For me these people did not realise the seriousness of the situation and were either missing or ognoring the reason behind the programme.





BTW chewey I think it was a News of The World journalist that broke that story.

mike65

flogen if you want to boot this over to televison thats fine cos thats where I meant it to go! Doh! :eek:

Mike.

flogen

mike65 wrote:

flogen if you want to boot this over to televison thats fine cos thats where I meant it to go! Doh! :eek:

Mike.

Well I'll copy it over for you, but it does raise an interesting debate regarding the media's representation of current social events, in this case the threat of terrorism, so I'll leave a copy here too.

flogen

flogen

chewy wrote:

the story didn't seem to last very long but did you hear that story about scotland yard arresting four men on suspicion of trying to acquire a dirty bomb... turns out the infamous "fake sheik" from the sunday world tried to entrap them into buying red mercury? ( which some say doesn't exist?)...

i find it terrifying that the sunday world is left to do this, or do the police have to arrest these guys anyway even if its embarrsing for them to be led to them by the fake sheik...?

alot of these arrest seem to be entrapement or stories that turn out to exgerrated like the arms dealer in america and the ricin found in england

Well as far as I know (and I could well be wrong), the police can't do this kind of stuff, so it's not like they're doing a bad job.
Basically if they pretend to be someone else and get a person to try and buy illegal weapons off them they're evidence is admissable (or very weak) in court. The "terrorists" team would say they were tricked into that situation and they had no intention of buy it otherwise etc.
Basically entrapment is grounds to see a case thrown out, so the police can only really act in instances like this when someone unrelated to them passes on information, and I'd say its more than just "They told me they wanted to buy it"

flogen