Changing narratives of conspiracy on British television: a review of Hunted, Secret State, Complicit and Utopia

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Notes

1 Joseph Oldham, “‘Disappointed Romantics’: Troubled Heritage in the BBC’s John Le Carré Adaptations,” Journal of British Cinema and Television 10, no. 4 (October 2013).

2 For an analysis of earlier programmes in this tradition, see Simon Willmetts and Christopher Moran, “Filming Treachery: British Cinema and Television’s Fascination with the Cambridge Five,” Journal of British Cinema and Television 10, no. 1 (January 2013): 49–70.

3 Gareth McLean, “The New Spook,” Radio Times, September 29–October 5, 2012, 20.

4 Anon., “Evolution and revolution,” Broadcast, February 23, 2013.

5 “BBC1 ends Hunted,” Broadcast, November 14, 2012. Nonetheless, at time of writing Cinemax has announced its desire to proceed further with a new production partner.

6 Maggie Brown, “Channel 4 commissions Utopia second series,” The Guardian, March 18, 2013.

7 Anon., “Evolution and revolution,” Broadcast.

8 E. Jane Dickson, “An Act of Faith,” Radio Times, February 16–22, 2013, 27.

9 Steven Kettell, New Labour and the New World Order: Britain’s Role in the War on Terror (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 153.

10 Slavoj Žižek, “The Depraved Heroes of 24 are the Himmlers of Hollywood,” The Guardian, January 10, 2006.

11 Zoe Williams, “Accidental Hero,” Radio Times, November 3–9, 2012, 27.

12 Chris Mullin, “When the Threat of a Coup Seemed More than Fiction,” The Guardian, March 7, 2006. For recent considerations of the “Wilson Plot” see Christopher Andrew, Defence of the Ream: The Authorized History of MI5 (London: Allen Lane, 2009); Christopher Moran, Classified: Secrecy and the State in Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); and Philip Murphy, “South African Intelligence, the Wilson Plot and Post-Imperial Trauma,” in Spooked: Britain, Empire and Intelligence Since 1945, eds. Patrick Major and Christopher Moran (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 97–118.

13 Chris Mullin, “Secret State: I Played the Vicar in the TV Version of My Novel,” The Guardian, November 5, 2012.

14 McLean, “The New Spook”, 20.

15 Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays, ed. Richard Hofstadter (London: Jonathan Cape, 1966), 29.

16 Michael Denning, Cover Stories: Narrative and Ideology in the British Spy Thriller (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), 14.

17 “Interview with Utopia’s writer Dennis Kelly,” Channel 4 Press, December 19, 2012, http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/interview-with-utopias-writer-dennis-kelly (accessed July 24, 2013).

18 Ibid.

19 Ben Arnold, “Utopia: Inside Channel 4’s New Unsettling Thriller,” The Guardian, January 12, 2013.

20 Maggie Brown, “Utopia Child Star’s Mother Defends Violent Plots,” The Guardian, February 9, 2013.