Product: State Of Play (2008)
Rating: 5.0
Watergate in London: Cynical journalist can be shocked
This almost six-hour-long BBC miniseries is brilliant! Great cast: David Morrissey, Kelly MacDonald, James McAvoy, Bill Nighy (remember the naken guitarist in "Love Actually"?) and John Simm, among other familiar British faces.An independent committee, headed by an up-and-coming Member of Parliament (Morrissey)is investigating British oil companies. One of the committee's researchers, an attractive young woman (of course), falls under the wheels of a train in the Underground. Accident? Suicide? Murder? It quickly becomes clear that the married MP was having an affair with his research assistant, and the avid British journalists start digging, armed with imagination, ruthlessness and a generous budget for buying information, which is more than Woodward and Bernstein had.It's addictive. I watched it three times through, and then had to slap my fingers to keep from putting it on again. By the second or third time, working class British English becomes understandable.... or you can do what I did, back up the DVD, close your eyes, and listen until you get it. They are speaking, fundamentally, the same language, after all. And you really want to know what they said.