MOBILE

Conspiracy, betrayal, and revenge in the global telecom industry Someone is blowing up mobile-phone towers across England. Messages scrawled in blood-red paint at the scenes proclaim that mobile phones are the instruments of the devil. What’s more, a gunman -- or gunmen -- is shooting cell phone users in mid-conversation. Baffled police investigators scramble to avert public panic. In four interlocking parts, this tense drama peels back the layers of a terrorist conspiracy, gradually revealing the evil at its core. We follow three characters -- a disgraced telecom executive (Michael Kitchen, Foyle’s War), a bitter ex-soldier (Jamie Draven, Billy Elliot), and a disgruntled engineer (Neil Fitzmaurice, Going Off Big Time) -- all united by circumstance or collusion. In a style reminiscent of Crash, the narrative moves backward and forward in time, unraveling the three men’s complex motives and their connections to a ruthless self-made millionaire (Keith Allen, Robin Hood). The result is an ultra-modern thriller packed with surprising twists and astonishing emotional depth. Though riffing on the rage one feels towards obnoxious cell phone users may sound like a one-liner, this four-part miniseries is semi-addictive and in fact, it is hard to watch one 50-minute episode without leaping to the next. Mobile’s suspense is built upon an extremely mandarin plot involving the assassination of people on phones and exploding cell phone towers, in which both criminals and police succumb to corruption and terrorism. Unlike Blue Murder, another Manchester-set detective series in which a detective sleuths a different crime in each episode, director Stuart Orme has laced each segment with differing crimes committed by various people, so that the main crime ring and its mastermind is only exposed in the end. In Episode One, "The Engineer," we meet the first criminal, Eddie Doig (Neil Fitzmaurice), disgruntled by a brain tumor he has from cell phone usage, making it logical that he will be the terrorist throughout. A wonderful performance by Julie Graham, as Eddie’s wife Donna, allows the viewer some sympathy for Eddie, though in subsequent episodes we leap back in time to trace Eddie’s involvement in an elusive team of more dangerous men out for revenge. In Episodes Two and Three, we meet hypnotist Ray Bould (John Thomson), telecom executive David West (Michael Kitchen), ex-Army man Maurice Stoan (Jamie Draven), as well as the head detective on the case, Lorraine Conil (Sunetra Sarker). Each character plays their part to ensure crimes remain unsolved, or at least lead to the wrong men. Mobile’s plot is so complex that one marvels at its potential realism. It reminds the viewer of how difficult terrorism is to pinpoint, expose, and cease, making Mobile’s cell-phone fixation more a metaphor for current political realities in which cell phones possibly play a major part. --Trinie Dalton P.when('A').execute(function(A) { A.on('a:expander:toggle_description:toggle:collapse', function(data) { window.scroll(0, data.expander.$expander[0].offsetTop-100); }); }); Review An entertaining ride with plenty of twists. -- Campus Circle magazine The complex techno-thriller ratchets up the suspense until you can barely stand it. -- The Seattle Times The writing and acting make it richer than so many similar TV productions before it. -- Fulvue Drive-In Very fast-paced and does a great job weaving all the intricate storylines... This is one of the best thrillers I've seen in a long time. -- Blogcritics Magazine ingeniously constructed -- Hartford Courant See more