"Blackout" - Channel 4 [Drama documentary]

StaticNoise

Blackout

Drama documentary exploring the effects of a devastating cyber-attack on Britain's national electricity grid, combining fictional scenes with footage recorded during real blackouts.

Feature-length 'What-If' drama exploring the effects of a devastating cyber-attack on Britain's national electricity grid.

Based on expert advice and meticulous research, Blackout combines real user-generated footage, alongside fictional scenes, CCTV archive and news reports to build a terrifyingly realistic account of Britain being plunged into darkness.

The film plots the days following a nationwide power cut, as experienced by a cast of ordinary characters struggling to feed and protect themselves and their families. These eyewitness accounts reveal the disastrous impact of a prolonged blackout on hospitals, law and order, transport, and our food and water supplies.

The programme casts members of the public from user-generated footage, weaving real-life archive with scripted drama to tell the story of how Britain could descend into chaos and anarchy without power.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/blackout
Starts Monday, September 9th 2013.

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Anyone looking forward to this? It kicks off tonight.

I love these dystopian programmes and movies, and this seems like it can pack a real punch. The fact that real footage is used, alongside the work of actors, it should be very realistic and powerful overall. When I first saw the trailer, I was intrigued. And, thanks to the preview clips on the Channel 4 microsite, I was even more drawn to it.

Skid X

I won't get to watch it tonight, but looking forward to seeing it later on in the week.

Like yourself, I do like a well made plausible dystopian drama!

sinjin_smythe

Im liking it

StaticNoise

Ironically, despite the fact that I started the thread, I've not got around to seeing it yet. I'm waiting for the rest of the crew to get home before kicking off.

Can't wait. I expected more fanfare and publicity, however.

sinjin_smythe

Its really tense but not in an unrealistic hollywood way. Alot of different perspectives played out, loving it.

dharma200

Reckon it is the softening up for the real event? Media gettin us ready for the real thing, escape to the hills......... Watched videos the other day about emp and the effect it would have in electronics... Sme say tinfoil hat stuff but it seems to be cropping up a lot recently in media etc.... Very 28 days later, some of the acting a bit iffy, but quite stressful to watch really... And ofcourse the reason is we know it is a possibility, probably more possible and likely than any of us want to admit to ourselves.... Eekk......

Lovely Bloke

that bloke with the genny, what a twat

Jester252

WOW

That ending

P_1

Have to say that I enjoyed watching that. I take it that it was a once off show?

dharma200

Yep, though plenty of the same ilk on you tube only supposed reality.... The music in this one is especially good http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wVLIJDXNXoo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DwVLIJDXNXoo

StaticNoise

It was a cracking show, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm glad that it was a feature length show, rather than milking it into a miniseries.

I will be sure to investigate other programming by the director. A strong cast, and some real nail biting moments, and the excellent editing made for a great watch. That was Channel 4 doing what Channel 4 does best. It was thought provoking, entertaining, and well made.


More of that, please.

Lovely Bloke

yeah, it was pretty good, the ending was powerful.

up there with Black Mirror and Utopia for Ch4 stuff from the last while. Have yet to watch Run.

twomonkeys

It all went a bit "Blair Witch Project" for me at the end.

Interesting film though. Didn't take very long for total anarchy in the main cities. Scariest part was the hospitals and the decisions that had to be made there.

touts

I found it very hard to watch. It was like watching something with visual Tourettes. Couple talking, WALL CEILING FLOOR, back to talking couple, FLOOR, WALL, back to couple talking FLOOR WALL FLOOR. Over to a doctor. CEILING! Sister asks doctor to explain WALL CEILING WALL what has happened to FLOOR WALL CEILING her Brother WALL WALL. Over to two twats looking for Petrol SKY SKY SKY. They find a GROUND SKY SKY tanker. They run over to Tanker SKY GROUND TANKER GROUND GROUND. They start to steal CAR TANKER CAR SKY GROUND CAR petrol. They stupidly SKY GROUND GROUND SKY GROUND SKY GROUND SKYGROUNDSKYGROUNDSKYGROUNDSKY blow up tanker.

That said the underlying message was an interesting one. We are a society that is totally dependent on electricity. Everything depends on it. Food, Heat, Light, Communications, Transportation, Hospitals etc. If the electricity was out for an extended period then things would get bad. In a few cases people would help each other (e.g. neighbours taking in an elderly woman) but there are a lot of scumbags out there just waiting for an excuse to loot and riot. And the longer it goes on their numbers will swell as people are left with no choice but to fight to feed their families.

Could this happen here? Well wait till the Troika start pushing through plans to sell off Electric Ireland and Bord Gais.

Tabnabs

I think it was quite a one-sided presentation of a "doomsday" scenario. It focused too much on large urban conurbations (i.e London) and little about the towns and villages across the UK. IMO, it relied too much on footage from the recent London riots and was influenced too much by this. I also believe there would have been a larger military presence on the streets and in the skies. You would have to think that a power-outage like this could present a very real threat of a pre-cursor to an attack on the country itself and precautions for this would have to be put into action.

It felt like it was an interesting idea that was produced with the minimum of budget.

RichT

Tabnabs wrote: »

I think it was quite a one-sided presentation of a "doomsday" scenario. It focused too much on large urban conurbations (i.e London) and little about the towns and villages across the UK.

I was actually thinking about this.

I'm from London and could identify how 'right royally fecked ' I'd have been with no electricity. However now I live in rural Ireland, I was thinking I'd be in better shape to 'ride it out'. I have a load of turf out back, so heating and hot water/food would be no problem in the short term.

The electricity outage would need to go on for a lot longer to as drastically effect rural life as urban life in IMO. I think this is why the program makers didn't bother showing the rural side.

If the outage had gone on for a considerably longer time, then I'm sure there would have been some 'good TV' while the county-folk defended their livestock, generators, diesel etc.. from the raiding city-folk.

I enjoyed the program BTW.

blackraspberry

I loved it. It really made me think. I liked the way it was done as well - most of the footage seemed to be crowd-sourced. I know one of the people who turned up in one scene, so i guess a lot of film students etc just filmed their own short bits and submitted it.

What did the survivalist guy expect to be honest? He was an idiot. So was your one trying to get to her mum. She achieved nothing, her mum was fine all along, and she put herself and her daughter in very serious danger.

Moral of the story is, stock up on tinned food and if the electricity goes out, stay at home and stfu!

Jester252

blackraspberry wrote: »

I loved it. It really made me think. I liked the way it was done as well - most of the footage seemed to be crowd-sourced. I know one of the people who turned up in one scene, so i guess a lot of film students etc just filmed their own short bits and submitted it.

What did the survivalist guy expect to be honest? He was an idiot. So was your one trying to get to her mum. She achieved nothing, her mum was fine all along, and she put herself and her daughter in very serious danger.

Moral of the story is, stock up on tinned food and if the electricity goes out, stay at home and stfu!

That what the survivalist did but he just mess up big time. As for the one getting to her mum while her mum was safe she learned not to judge a book by its cover and maybe found love in the driver.

You can understand why they focused mostly on the cities. It wouldn't have been as dramatic had they put towns and villages in there, especially when a lot of them would probably be relatively OK compared to the cities.

I do love Channel 4's shows as of late - this and Utopia have been able to stand up against the likes of American produced shows.

mike65

I didn't see this but did just flick it on at about 10 past 10 and there was a pair of idiots trying to half inch fuel from a tanker, talk about not prepared for the job at hand! Was everyone a fool?

StaticNoise

No, not all fools, but there was a contrast between the good people, and the bad people, and the good and bad in people.