Could you run the country?
A role-playing interactive drama documentary thing that ran on BBC2 in 2004.
The program gave three people the chance to run the country during a potential disaster. The crises included terror attacks on London, flood, plague, collapse of the power network and hostage taking. These had been designed to be as realistic as possible, although there where still some cases of artistic license. Viewers were able to make decisions interactively at the same time as the studio players. Each scenario was played once on BBC2, and then redone with a different set of "Ministers" on BBC4 immediately afterwards.
They receive advice from military, police and communication experts (at least one of whom will not agree with anyone else, usually either military (who was often teetering on the General Ripper) or PR (who more than once advised the ministers take the path of greatest damage, because the lesser of the two would make a better headline). This communication expert was Amanda Platell, who had been the top Conservative spin doctor in their 2001 whipping, so her skills were already questionable...
Not only that, but the options placed before the players, the realism of some of the events or scenarios and the timeline (although that may have been due to editing) were all criticized by some people. On more than one occasion the "Ministers" did something the government would not be able to do for legal reason (such as flood buildings with people still in them, murder under UK lawnote ) but no one told them until after they had done it. Hardly realistic.
Trope Examples:
- Big Disaster Plot: The premise of the show is how the members of the public who become pretend ministers of The Government cope in a major crisis like a terrorist attack.
- General Ripper: Tim Garden walked into his territory at times. Later he became a peer for the Liberal Democrats.
- Mockumentary
- Game Show: The BBC defied that it was one at the time, but there are contestants, playing a game, that technically has a - nuanced - win or loss condition, on television.
- Too Dumb to Live: Or rather Too Dumb to Save Others. In the terrorist attack episode they let a jet crash into the Houses of Parliament despite having RAF fighters in the area to shoot it down (and indeed had scrambled them for that purpose). Afterward at least one minister still thought it was the correct choice.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: This, mixed with a smattering of I Warned You. The military expert gave this to the ministers after they failed to stop the jet crashing into the Houses of Parliament, denouncing their failure to shoot the plane down despite already knowing it was being controlled by a terrorist group, and that the whole point of mobilising the RAF in the first place was to give them that option.
- Ignored Aesop: The group fails to shut the flood doors in the London Underground in time to prevent flooding the entire network because they spent too long debating it, which was the same reason the option to shoot down the jet as it approached the London no-fire zone became unavailable and led to a disaster.
- Gunboat Diplomacy: Kind of, but not really executed right. The ministers scramble the RAF in an effort to get the approaching suspicious jet to divert, but then don't carry out the implicit threat by firing on the plane when it becomes clear they're unwilling to comply with their instructions.
- The Plague: The core crisis of one of the episodes.
- Comes Great Responsibility: In-universe, the ministers have the power to command the apparatus of the UK government - and their failure to operate it appropriately can lead to significant loss of life and severe economic damage.
- Downer Ending: In the Hijack episode, the show ends with the Houses of Parliament destroyed and the rail network flooded. Aside from the significant loss of life, economic damage to the UK as a result of the ministers' failure to intervene is running up in the billions of pounds.
- Lying to Protect Your Feelings: Heavily inverted. The aides aren't afraid to tell the ministers when they think they're wasting time or making bad choices.
- Timed Mission: The ministers are on a Race Against the Clock; the hijacked passenger jet is flying towards the capital and they have until it enters the London no-fire zone to issue a command to fire on it. Ultimately, they do not do so.
- You Are Too Late: What the ministers are effectively told after they decide what to do about the approaching hijacked passenger jet - just after it crosses into the London exclusion zone at which point firing on it is impossible.
- Horrible Judge of Character: The ministers ultimately take the word of the terrorists that they intend to land their hijacked plane at Heathrow Airport to engage in hostage negotiations. Instead they crash it into Parliament.
- It's a Wonderful Failure: The television audience are shown just how badly the ministers failed to intervene in the crisis at the end of the show: Parliament is destroyed and the rail network is flooded, causing billions of pounds in damage and killing an unknown number of people.
- Little "No": The RAF pilots are generally pretty calm, but one of them utters a quiet "Jesus" as the hijacked jet careens into the Houses of Parliament.
- Government Procedural: If it were a game show, anyway. The contestants are ministers in a simulated UK government, attempting to navigate national crises.
- Power Outage Plot: Due to issues at a series of substations, the power supply to areas of West London are interrupted, causing parts of the London Underground to stop running. It's later revealed that someone close to the power network was able to issue a command to the substations that they were experiencing oversupply, causing them to stop transmitting power.
- Tragic Mistake: The refusal by the ministers to fire on the approaching hijacked jet, which leads to it crashing into the Houses of Parliament.
- Unwinnable by Design: Somewhat. The ministers at one point get to a state where - because they've spent too long debating - the correct option (shooting down the hijacked jet plane approaching London) becomes unavailable as the plane enters the London no-fire zone, at which point their RAF jets cannot shoot it.
- Fatal Flaw: As cold as it sounds, the ministers' desire not to let anyone die means they allow more deaths then if they had intervened in a way that would have led to some deaths; see their decision to use the helicopters to send in paramedics following the Waterloo train station explosion rather than evacuate burns victims with a high probability of survival, and their refusal to shoot at the approaching hijacked passenger jet because of the passengers on board, even though they die anyway when the plane hits the Houses of Parliament.
