Occupation
BBC 1
Psychoville
BBC 2
Much as it galls me ever to agree with anyone, there’s no way to avoid adding my voice to the chorus of critical approval for Occupation. This three-part BBC drama shown on consecutive nights was everything claimed for it – meaty, intelligent, emotionally engaging, credible and courageous.
Why courageous? Partly because, even now, the BBC is kept in a state of vague (or not so vague) anxiety by the same Government which emasculated its leadership and smeared its coverage of the Iraq War with the Hutton Report. Most recently, suggestions about “top slicing” the licence fee have been used as a further veiled threat to the corporation’s independence and integrity. So it’s no wonder that Occupation is the first major BBC drama about the Iraq War since the invasion in 2003, or that the BBC has apparently waited until the withdrawal of British combat troops last month before broadcasting it.
A combination of proper research, visceral performances and a classic and tightly-plotted morality tale was deployed by scriptwriter Peter Bowker and director Nick Murphy. A trio of British soldiers share one pivotal moment during a mission in Basra in 2003 – while searching for snipers in an apartment block, the men flush out a bewildered little girl, who is injured when a hand grenade suddenly explodes. One of the soldiers is also hurt and rushed to safety by his comrades. It falls to Sergeant Mike Smith (played by James Nesbitt) to run through the streets with the unconscious child to reach the nearest hospital. When he realises that the girl may be left to die there for lack of basic resources, he ensures that she is brought back to Britain for medical treatment. A great fuss is made of this in the national press, mirroring several real cases of the time. Now a popular hero, Smith could retire from the army and settle back into cosy civilian life were it not for one thing – he has met the love of his life in the shape of a female hospital doctor Aliyah (Lubna Azabal). He is prepared to risk his marriage, his family, career and even his life to return to Iraq to find her.
The other two soldiers involved in the grenade incident have their own reasons for returning to Iraq. For Corporal Danny Peterson (Stephen Graham), it’s the quest for big money to fill his empty life. He joins a band of mercenaries protecting and promoting Western companies claiming to rebuild the wreck of Iraq. In fact, they are helping themselves to some of the millions in regeneration cash which were stolen and obscenely squandered in the years following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Peterson is a tough Scouser, who will risk his life to save a friend, but is prepared to con Iraqi hospitals out of desperately-needed funds and equipment.
Lance Corporal Lee Hibbs (Warren Brown) works alongside him, but watches his old idealistic hopes of helping the Iraqi people trickle into the sand. By the time five years and several shocking traumas have passed, these three men have been broken by the whole experience and left wondering what the war has done to the lives of everyone it touches. Occupation was powerful stuff – the reaction to which proves how hungry we are for this story to be told in dramatic form. I do hope the Iraq War’s “invisible man”, Tony Blair, was watching. Thanks BBC – now give us a drama from the Iraqi population’s point of view.
I wanted to say: “On a lighter note” in turning my attention to new comedy-drama Psychoville. But this is comedy from two of the League of Gentlemen team, so the laughs are jet black and gothic. The location has shifted away from the League’s fictional home
town to various actual places in Britain, but the characters are as wonderfully unpleasant as ever. I still miss the citizens of Royston Vasey. I wonder what – or who – they are doing now.
Still, Psychoville is looking quite promising, as far as you can tell from the short 30 minute episodes imposed by apparently humourless television executives. Frankly, in our grotesque political times, we can’t have too much of this sort of vile and disgusting stuff.
Helen Chappell
