A 1977 BBC series predicted 1990's surveillance state—and accidentally called our entire timeline.
Season 2 • Episode 8
Latest"We always said there'd be Peace Crimes Trials one day ... We're winning now. There'll have to be a purge of the PCD soon." The dissident assault on the Public Control Department has been successful, but the public suicide of a cell member has resulted in world condemnation of Britain's policies and the PCD being plunged into bitter in-fighting.
The series is set in a dystopian future in which Britain is under the grip of the Home Office's Department of Public Control (PCD), a tyrannically oppressive bureaucracy riding roughshod over the population's civil liberties. Edward Woodward plays Jim Kyle, a journalist on the last independent newspaper called The Star, who turns renegade and begins to fight the PCD covertly. The officials of the PCD, in turn, try to provide proof of Kyle's subversive activities.
Acting
Edward Woodward's simmering moral outrage is *chef's kiss*
Production
Brutalist BBC sets that aged into accidental documentary
Writing
Greatorex's bureaucratic jargon feels illegally authentic
Creator
Wilfred Greatorex
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Created during the IRA bombing campaigns and 'Prevention of Terrorism' expansions—viewers in 1977 recognized the PCD's powers as barely-exaggerated reality.
Edward Woodward would later play an even more famous TV rebel in 'The Equalizer'—making him the patron saint of 1970s-80s righteous anger.
GB
