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Joel and Will get the last thing they expected: proof, from two entirely different sources.

There’s a moment in shows like this where everything drops away, the show turns a card and you find yourself somewhere very different. Broken Veil does that this episode and it does it the way it does everything else; with a cheerful, deliberate pace and a constantly escalating sense of menace.

That menace, this time, comes from the Cold War wreckage scattering the country and how it intersects with the temporary realities of movie sets. This week’s guest is Al (no relation), a film director looking for a nicely dystopian setting. He finds a bunker that could be of use and this time, as he tells his story, we’re already on edge. We’ve heard Tony and Sara step out of the world in their episodes and the show has successfully combined the careful mundanity of unoccupied spaces with the menace of an empty room.

This week, that empty room has the added menace of the Cold War. A frozen not-quite reality, the polite lie of a survivable nuclear war fits this show’s aesthetic like a trembling, terrified hand in a radioactive glove. It also escalates the entire show. Al sees someone he recognises, somewhere they shouldn’t be. Gabrielle Glaister, the actress best known for her work as ‘Bob’ in Blackadder. A real, verified person who disappears. The comforting reality of the familiar broken by the alien truth of something impossible. It’s a great moment and it’s just the start.

First we get Joel and Will’s visit to the bunker in question. It’s a lovely moment of on-location charm and outright menace and it gives us insight into the terrible shared hallucination of ‘normal life’ after World War III. I’m writing this on the day a revival of BBC nightmare classic Threads has been announced and it has added resonance. Corridors haunted by a not-quite future. A ghost of an idea wandering halls designed to make the mass murder of invaders easier.

By itself, this is great. But the final ten minutes of the episode gear the show all the way up not something new. First we get an appearance from Gabrielle Glaister herself, further blurring the lines between reality and fiction. She confirms that she never filmed in that location. And then she turns that final card, and provides proof that someone else saw something like what Al saw. That the truth is mutable, and that something strange really is going  on, right under everyone’s noses, in the quiet places of the world.

It’s a brilliant reveal, and it’s one I’m struggling to talk about without spoiling the surprise. It’s an extraordinary beat that answers questions, raises others and leaves you both wanting more and aware that something very dark is starting to come into focus. It’s incredible work, and everyone at production companies Cheese & Pickle and Loudburst should be very proud.

Verdict: Three more episodes to go and I’ve never been more hooked. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart

 

Recommended Research

Gabrielle Glaister

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabrielle_Glaister

The Philadelphia Experiment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Experiment

Threads

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02kgkkg