The State Within is a six-part British television political thriller series, written and created by Lizzie Mickery and Daniel Percival, that was broadcast on BBC One in the United Kingdom from Thursday, 2 November 2006. The series, directed by Percival and Michael Offer and produced by Grainne Marmion, is a joint production between BBC Films and BBC America that follows Sir Mark Brydon (Jason Isaacs), the British Ambassador to Washington, who is caught in the centre of a political conspiracy threatening to depose Western governments. As such, he must prevent a war, all whilst facing his own personal dilemmas.
On 22 January 2007, the series was released on DVD in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the series premiered during Presidents Day weekend as a three-part miniseries, concluding on 24 February 2007. After being repeated on BBC Four in June 2007 as part of the channel's Conspiracy U.S.A. week of programming, the series subsequently released on Netflix worldwide, where it was edited down into seven 50-minute episodes. The series was subsequently nominated for two Golden Globe Awards in the categories Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television and Best Actor - Miniseries or Television Film.
Contents
Plot
Lynne Warner (Sharon Gless) is the United States Secretary of Defense, Nicholas Brocklehurst (Ben Daniels) is nominally the British Counsellor External Affairs, but is a Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) agent assigned to embassy duty, and James Sinclair (Alex Jennings) is the former British ambassador to the fictional former Soviet republic of Tyrgyzstan (cf. Kyrgyzstan). This character resembles Craig Murray, the British ambassador who exposed British and American complicity in torture and human rights abuses in Uzbekistan.
Cast
Main cast
Jason Isaacs as Sir Mark Brydon; British ambassador to Washington
Ben Daniels as Nicholas Brocklehurst; an MI6 agent and Counsellor for External Affairs
Eva Birthistle as Jane Lavery; employee of the Human Rights Commission
Neil Pearson as Phil Lonsdale; Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy
Genevieve O'Reilly as Caroline Hanley; daughter of the plane victim
Sharon Gless as Lynne Warner; American Secretary of Defence
Noam Jenkins as Christopher Styles; Head of Defence Intelligence
Ted Whittall as Gordon Adair; CEO of the Armitage Corporation
Christopher Bolton as Vinny Swain
Nigel Bennett as Colonel Charles Macintyre; president of CMC Secure Operations
Marnie McPhail as George Blake
Alex Jennings as James Sinclair; ex-British Ambassador to Tyrgyzan
Aaron Abrams as Matthew Weiss
Lennie James as Luke Gardner; an ex-British paratrooper currently on Death Row for murder
Supporting cast
Emma Campbell as Sally Davis
Rahnuma Panthaky as Nasreen Qureshi
Briony Glassco as Jennifer Grimes
Louca Tassone as Azzam Sinclair
Roman Podhora as Vernon Burchill
Michael Rhoades as Gary Pritchard
Ron Lea as Carl Garcia
Patrick Garrow as Brad Godovsky
David Eisner as Sam Levinson
Rory O’Shea as news anchor