Blackout

Imagine if something outrageously unprecedented happened? The results would be both unpredictable and scary, right? That’s the basic premise of this hysterical (in both senses of the word) feature-length docudrama in which Britain is cyber-hacked and loses electricity for a week. Fortunately, in this parallel Britain, mobile phone batteries last for ages, so various intrepid souls have managed to catalogue the chaos.

For a start, everyone turns into a twat; from the smug twat in Homerton with his generator to the gormless twats in Southport with their nicked car and the shrill, selfish twat who is trying to get herself and her daughter up to Sheffield to stay with grandma. We’d guess that these people’s foolishness is deliberate; such a situation would clearly bring out the worst in all of us. But to be fair, they seemed like twats from the start. Besides this objection, there are countless leaps of logic; for example, it would be interesting to get some sort of sober assessment of how plausible such a scenario actually is.

But then again, that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. Because for all of its flaws, ‘Blackout’ is great fun. Doomsday scenarios are a fiction staple for a reason and this is put together with gleeful, rapacious relish. Take ‘Blackout’ with a gargantuan pinch of salt, but watch it anyway.