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begins with a huge explosion in the sea, thanks to munitions stuck in a wreck under the water, before events go back to 24 hours earlier.
As before, Robert Carlyle‘s Prime Minister Robert Sutherland is forever looking anxious, and admits to his Chief of Staff, Anna Marshall (Victoria Hamilton), that none of the cabinet are his friends, it’s “purely strategic”. Meanwhile, after the personal shenanigans from Series 1, this time, his daughter out of the picture as she’s living in Santiago with a Chilean anarchist who sets fire to tube stations.
Along the way, there’s some baddies who want to target oligarch Mikael Kostenko (Greg Kolpakchi), who’s heading off to sort out a land contract in the Amazon, while we see the return of Archie Glover-Morgan (David Haig), who comes across as the smarmy Jacob Rees-Mogg-type – so it’s no coincidence that his character has a double-barrelled name – who was fired from the cabinet last time, but now they need his help, and he has some demands of his own.
Thanks to the sea situation, there’s some more B-movie-style nonsense like last time, and with the same sort of dodgy CGI, but after watching just the opener, it’s all very leaden, and this time, I don’t know if I care to get into this series.
And for those who don’t know about the title, C.O.B.R. is the Cabinet Office Briefing Room… presumably, the A is silent.
COBRA Season 2: Cyberwar begins on Sky Showcase on Friday October 15th at 9pm, with all episodes being available on demand at the same time. The series is not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD.
COBRA Season 1 is available to buy on Blu-ray and DVD.
Episode 1 Score: 4/10
Series Directors: Mo Ali, Sallie Aprahamian
Producer: Joe Donaldson
Writer: Ben Richards
Music: Rob Lane
Cast:
Prime Minister Robert Sutherland: Robert Carlyle
Anna Marshall: Victoria Hamilton
Fraser Walker: Richard Dormer
Audrey Hemmings: Alexa Davies
Archie Glover-Morgan: David Haig
Mark Everly: Dipo Ola
Rachel Sutherland: Lucy Cohu
Barney Marshall: Joshua Hogan
Joseph Obasi: Richard Pepple
Mikael Kostenko: Greg Kolpakchi
Kostenko Aide: Nikolaos Brahimllari
Graham Hadleigh: Jonathan Dickson
Max: Twana Omer
Peter Mott: Edward Bennett
Hari Misra: Karan Gill
Francine Bridge: Marsha Thomason
Eleanor James: Lisa Palfrey
Rodrigo Araya: Sebastian Capitan Viveros
Larissa Petrova: Victoria Valcheva
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.