(FOUR STARS)
It’s haunting English five-episode television miniseriesIt starts off brutally. In Welsha Caucasian man enters a supermarket, with a machete and a hammer, locates a man of Asian origin, and
to the cry of “White power!” she begins attacking him, out of racially motivated revenge. But the worst thing is that this, and the story it addresses, are not pure fiction but a dramatization of events that happened recently.
In the plot there is also a real person, Matthew Collinsco-writer of the shipment, played by Stephen Graham with deep conviction. We find him giving a speech on the extreme right of the United Kingdom to a group of students, and if his language is a bit strong, he says, it’s because he used to be part of the movement himself, before he became a anti-fascist activist. Some flashbacks make explicit the horrors perpetrated by the gang he belonged to when he was young.
Now, he works for the charity, which actually exists, HOPE Not Hate, dedicated to tracking and combating violent outbreaks or attacks. Therefore, their home life is not easy at all. In retaliation for her actions, she receives threats, her family has moved several times in the last year, and her long-suffering wife (Leanne Best)
lives on the edge of nerves.
However, the emotional core of the plot is Robbie Mullen (a promising Andrew Ellis), a disgruntled, frail, and impressionable young electrician who joins National Action (NA), a group of British neo-Nazis. The reason? His need to blame someone other than himself for the difficulties in his life, the mistakes he has made, and the failures he has faced. These hot-headed militants are, as Collins says, young, lonely, dropouts, hanging out in pubs and talking about the great battle against their various enemies. They even avoid friends and family who don’t share their beliefs.
For the less vulnerable who lead that group, neo-Nazism is a way to spread hate and accumulate power. Suspicious that the members are planning something big to stand out, Collins tries to find a “someone” to go undercover and collect data. Concerns intensify after the assassination of a congresswoman, proving that such fringe anger can have horrifying and unsuspected repercussions.
There are no handsome spies or charismatic villains here, just an all-important struggle between decent people fighting for a better world, and others whose minds have been broken by frustration, ignorance, and resentment.
