State of Play debuted in May of 2003, and, along with the TV series Spooks, cemented the BBC as one of the best programmers of thrillers in the world. A six-part series, it starred David Morrissey as MP Stephen Collins and John Simm as journalist Cal McCaffrey, and was recently adapted as a feature film starring Ben Affleck and Russell Crowe.
State of Play: The TV Series’ Plot
Two seemingly-unrelated deaths set off the plot of State of Play. Collins’s research assistant Sonia Baker (Shauna Macdonald) falls under a subway train, while a teenaged bag-snatcher is shot dead in an alleyway. It instantly becomes clear that Collins has been having an affair with Baker, but that the second death is related doesn’t become clear until McCaffrey and a small army of journalists unearth a phone call from the dead teenager to Baker.
McCaffrey has a connection to Collins – he was his campaign manager when Collins was running for Parliament. When the relationship with Baker becomes public, Collins’s wife, Anne (Polly Walker), seeks solace with McCaffrey and they begin an affair.
McCaffrey’s fellow investigators include Della Smith (Kelly Macdonald), a young, persuasive reporter with a spine of steel, Dan Foster (James McAvoy), another young reporter who’s able to charm information out of contacts and Helen Preger (Amelia Bullmore), a veteran with contacts in Parliament. Together, they uncover a conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of government and implicates a major oil company and its lobbying firm.
State of Play: An Analysis
While the series was about government corruption, most of the action takes place in the newsroom, with journalists playing detective – a situation that probably happens more on film than it does in real life, especially in recent years. McCaffrey’s editor, Cameron Foster (Bill Nighy), finds himself under pressure from his publisher to avoid embarrassing the government and also runs afoul of Scotland Yard for hiding evidence. For a brief period, McCaffrey even goes to jail to avoid revealing a source.
At these moments, the journalists look like heroes, and the series doesn’t really punish them for the bad choices they make. When they withhold evidence, a police officer is killed, but aside from McCaffrey’s brief stint in chokey, no one is blamed. And despite McCaffrey’s very obvious conflict of interest, he is not kicked off the Collins story. Foster would apparently rather have access to Collins than worry about possible bias. It’s hard to imagine that kind of conflict getting by in a North American newsroom.
The pace of the series does lag a bit in comparison to Hollywood thrillers, so it’s disappointing that more attention wasn’t given to some of the side issues raised by the journalists’ behaviour. It’s also strange to see, even six years ago, a newspaper being at the forefront of an investigation, with little or no competition from either television or bloggers. (This is an issue raised by the feature film, however).
Despite these problems, the cast and the writing are uniformly excellent. Nighy in particular is wonderful as the no-nonsense editor, and Kelly Macdonald, with her short stature and sweet voice, is a revelation as the strong-willed Della. And North American audiences, who may still think of the BBC as the purveyor of stuffy, enclosed costume dramas, will see no difference in the production values of State of Play versus any American series. For great acting and smart scripts, State of Play can’t be beat.
(For a comparison between the two versions, click here.)
