EYE OF THE STORM (THE TRICK)

 

The docudrama, if it is done really well, sheds light on a news story by going beyond the headlines.

Its performers engage our sympathies and the films occasionally tap into our sense of outrage as they tackle a great injustice.

Among the finest examples of the genre in Britain are Michael Beckham's 'Who Bombed Birmingham?,' Paul Greengrass's 'The Murder of Stephen Lawrence' and Peter Kosminsky's 'The Government Inspector'.

Like all television based on real events, the mixing of fact and fiction, though, is a delicate balancing act.

It needs to feel real. Its characters and dialogue needs to be believable.

Get the tone wrong and audiences just switch off.

As the world prepares for the Glasgow COP 26 United Nations climate change summit, BBC1 has pulled together a slate of programmes on one of the biggest challenges our world faces.

Its docudrama The Trick' has been marketed as a centrepiece show and it wades into one of the biggest controversies in the history of COP - the 2009 Climategate hacking scandal.

Climate change sceptics jumped on the release of thousands of emails and documents hacked from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, including a few which appeared to suggest the data was being manipulated to prove climate change was man made.

The University of East Anglia team had not exaggerated the threat, as the sceptics claimed.

However they were very much caught on the back foot as mainstream media outlets ran with the allegations that the research had been manipulated and oil rich countries discredited the data.

Subsequent inquiries by Westminster, the US Environmental Protection Agency and others exonerated the University of East Anglia team and found that the media controversy had been manufactured.

Adapted for the small screen by poet and playwright Owen Shears and directed by Pip Broughton, 'The Trick' casts Jason Watkins as the head of the climate research unit, Professor Phil Jones.

At the start of the drama, Professor Jones is like a rabbit caught in the headlights as an international media storm engulfs the university.

Barely able to speak, he is deeply traumatised by the savaging of his unit's credibility and his own academic reputation and is in a state of deep depression.

Jerome Flynn and George Mackay's public relations consultants Neil Wallis and Sam Bowen are engaged to coach the Professor ahead of a daunting appearance before a House of Commons committee probing claims that he doctored the data.

Faced with a gibbering wreck, they immediately know it is going to be a massive struggle to turn him into a coherent, credible witness.

Meanwhile Justin Salinger's Detective Superintendent Julian Gregory is spearheading a police investigation into the hack, with Tara Divina's Detective Sergeant Anita Suppiah on board.

However it is Rhashan Stone's tech expert Gareth Ellmann who does much of the cybersleuthing - although they never quite trace whether the Russians are behind the hack or other climate sceptic forces.

Adrian Edmondson's University Vice Chancellor Professor Edward Acton stands by his man as it becomes clear the Climate Research Unit has become the victim of cynical media manipulation, with the aim of thwarting meaningful action at the Copenhagen COP summit.

Professor Jones' wife, Victoria Hamilton's Ruth also stands firmly beside her husband, gently nudging him towards standing up for the integrity of his research.

Shears and Broughton have their characters occasionally break the fourth wall in a bid to impart vital information and stir up the audience's sense of indignation.

It's a risky narrative move.

Adam McKay's financial crash movie 'The Big Short' showed how to do this properly, delivering complex information in a very entertaining way.

Do it badly, however, and you risk alienating your audience, coming across as preachy and drowning them in facts that never really engage them. 

Unfortunately 'The Trick' falls into the latter camp.

All too often, Shears' script drips with facts and deeply felt indignation but its dialogue is ear scrapingly woeful.

It's a bit of a turn off watching a drama with characters that keep telling you how the information they are about to impart is really interesting.

It shows a lack of confidence but unfortunately 'The Trick' resorts to those misguided narrative tactics.

And there's something wrong about a drama when your attention wanders while characters fume about the cynical tactics being deployed by an unseen enemy.

Watkins, an accomplished character actor, is horribly wasted for the first third of the film - spending much of the time gurgling in a state of shock.

Neither he nor the rest of the cast really get to grips with dialogue that requires them to explain hockey stick graphs, tree trunk rings as indicators of climate change and the consequences of once reliable climate data diverging.

Shears appears to know how difficult it is, crafting scenes where  Flynn and Mackay's PR consultants really labour to get the Professor to drop the climate jargon and explain his data in layman's terms.

Unfortunately these scenes are tortuous and wearisome.

Hamilton, Flynn, Edmonson, Gregory, Divina, Stone and David Calder as the UK COP negotiator Sir David King all do their best but are weighed down by cumbersome dialogue.

Even an actor as talented as George Mackay struggles to breathe life into Shears' unconvincing dialogue.

His speeches about fighting for a better world for his children sound about as stirring as Sting when he was trying to encourage all of us to join his crusade to save the planet.

All of this is a shame because people should be outraged about the way Professor Jones and his team were targeted and their work was grossly distorted. 

Unfortunately, 'The Trick' does a very poor job explaining how the University of East Anglia research was manipulated and it struggles to fan the flames of righteous anger.

In an era of alternative facts where propaganda and untruths have cost lives during the COVID pandemic and fuelled the storming of the Capitol Building in Washington this year, it isn't much a stretch to argue that the 2009 Climategate hacking marked a moment when the rot in public discourse really set in.

The trashing of expertise for short term political and financial gain set back the cause of tackling a climate crisis that in 2021 seems to be gathering pace.

It was also a moment where civility in politics went out the window, when boorish jousting on 24 news channels drowned out rational, factual debate.

Shears and Broughton's drama hints at this theme but it never really explores it.

And that alone merely underscores why 'The Trick' is a frustrating watch.

A decent docudrama lurks in this true life tale.

However Shears and Broughton's execution of the story is so poor, 'The Trick' misses every single target.

('The Trick' was broadcast on BBC1 on October 19, 2021)

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