The Undeclared war (2026) – Season 2 – More absorbing (than S1)
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Genre: Spy Thriller
Platform: Jio Hotstar
Time: 6 episodes x average 48 minutes
Cast: Simon Pegg (Danny Patrick). Sian Brooke (Barbara Napier). German Segal (Vadim Trusov). Danny Sapani (Charles Francis). Cloe Pirrie (Lt.Col. Roz Cavendish). Jason Tobin (Nicky Chan). Hannah Khalique-Brown (Saara Parvin). Ed Stoppard (Foreign Secretary Richard Marston).
Plot: Danny is now on an almost non-stop treadmill of preventing Russian cyber-attacks against the UK civil and military infrastructure. His wife Barbara, ex MI6, is also in GCHQ in the East Asian (read Chinese) linguistics department. Multiple leaks of data point to an obvious mole at GCHQ. Meanwhile Vadim who had vanished, gets in touch with Saara and states that he is in China, along with fellow Russian hackers, planning an even bigger attack against UK, the seeds of which are already there as some innocent garbage in the earlier codes. Given that Danny is advocating caution, Foreign Secretary Marston sends an Army cyber warfare team headed by Lt. Col. Cavendish to oversee an aggressive response …
WARNING : MILD SPOILERS (shouldn’t still prevent you from watching the series😊)
Season 1 ended on a note where it was clear that Vadim is out there and Saara desperately wants to contact him (check out my take on Season 1 here ) Season 2 makes it clear why – Vadim gets in touch with Saara through a commercial videogame chat box and announces his presence in China along with fellow Russian hackers. That in itself is a giveaway that “more the merrier” seems to be the approach of the writers. You already have Russia as a suspect. So why not add China too? Thankfully the Chinese puppet North Korea didn’t make an appearance 😊.
There is a somewhat masala feeling about the series in that various strands are added one after the other. In episode 1, Barbara’s relationship with the Chinese ‘dissident’ Nicky Chan is revealed and anyone who follows any kind of spy serial will surely guess that this is NOT going to be what it seems and that is exactly what happens. By episode 2, it is clear that Barbara has been truly and well trapped by Chan who is an MSS operative, who had played the long game – pretending to be a Chinese dissident in the democracy movement in Hong Kong while secretly sharing all the information with his MSS masters. This is an excellent view of how the Chinese play ‘the long game’ in real life; one hears of Russian spies being caught regularly while there is hardly any information on Chinese spies being caught.
Back to the serial. There are some huge ‘are you kidding me’ moments and the biggest one is how Vadim escapes from the airtight security of the Chinese apartment because his Chinese handler is a secret pro-democracy dissident! Really? What follows however shows how the oppressive surveillance in China takes a toll on friends and family and how “maintaining good social credit” is a big thing in China – anything not sanctioned by the Government and your social credit comes down with one being unable to travel or sometimes even buy daily groceries. Check out this wiki link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit_system
That said, there is enough masala in the series to keep everyone engrossed . Mostly the “what will happen to Barbara” angle is the one that takes up more time as she literally is forced to do tasks ordered by Nicky Chan while Danny soon notices changes in her behavior. This part plays out extremely well as it’s a classic long term espionage trap practiced by any intelligence agency. This is the angle that keeps us interested through the series and we feel for both Danny and Barbara, each knowing that the other can’t take the deceptions.
There is also the subplot about the shitty Foreign Secretary who wants his own purely Army team inside GCHQ but that too soon takes an interesting turn as they start working along with GCHQ after the initial chill vibes. Saara Parvin is relegated to a minor character and this series is all about Danny and Barbara.
Like I said, there is enough masala to keep you interested and since its only 6 episodes, it moves at an even pace to its final conclusion. You can overlook the somewhat ‘are you kidding me’ moments to do with Vadim and focus on the rest of the story which is top notch.
Script – 4 out of 5
Story – 4 out of 5
Direction – 4 out of 5
Photography – 4 out of 5
Total – 4 out of 5
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