Blackout (Channel 4) Review

Channel 4’s brand new “documentary drama” purports to give a dramatised account of what could happen if the UK’s national grid went down for a week. It demonstrates how quickly people become desperate due to literal powerlessness, documenting an ensemble cast of characters’ immoral but necessary actions – like stealing vodka and a car because because the trains have stopped running. Welcome to Blackout.

I can only assume this made-for-TV movie was produced as a parody of Channel 4 programming that has somehow slipped past an unsuspecting executive. The sheer audacity with which the cobbled-together found footage feature marries sensationalism to poor acting and a distended narrative could not have been expected to result in anything enjoyable. I can’t imagine why the broadcaster thought it deserved such a large-scale marketing campaign.

I should clarify that the docu-drama billing isn’t particularly accurate. There are no interviews, nor is there a narrator; there isn’t much more documentary value here than in other found footage films, except in the fake news footage used to segue from one character’s story to another’s, and the occasional on-screen facts about electricity consumption. The use of real footage from news broadcasts and past blackouts could be said to add a realistic dimension, but I’m yet to be convinced its use was an artistic choice so much as the result of budgetary constraints.

Despite its ham-fisted means of bridging the programme’s stories, Blackout’s ensemble format could have been quite palatable did it not feature some truly unlikeable characters. Though it’s easy to sympathise with some – like a mother and her young daughter – it’s much harder to engage emotionally with two drunk car-jackers, or a girl that mostly films herself crying and insisting she isn’t filming hospital staff. We never really get to know them, either; the characters are barely explored before the first advert break (of which there are admittedly many on Channel 4) and they still seem shallow by the end.

It’s also rather disappointing, though not altogether surprising, that Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland never feature. Most of the action is centred in London, with brief forays into Leeds and Sheffield. Where are Cardiff, Glasgow, and Belfast? In all honesty, I’d have found a segment about cross-border co-operation to restore power in Northern Ireland much more interesting than all the distasteful stock footage of Metropolitan Police officers whacking rioters with batons.

Back-up power can probably be credited with Blackout making it to its halfway mark, after which only momentum keeps it going, without twists or turns, until it finally flickers out at the end of its 90-minute runtime. Its final message is somewhat unclear. Implausible things happen to you if you decide to loot? Hospital staff are incompetent? I doubt even the writers know. As with many Channel 4 programmes, I suspect the over-arching message they were after is: fear everything. Unfortunately, I feel more inclined to laugh.