Apparently, British television was missing a key demographic. Bake Off is too soft; I’m a Celebrity lacks intercontinental ballistic missiles. Enter Sky’s The Wargame—a four-part docudrama featuring former cabinet ministers playing out a simulated Russian attack on the UK.
It’s an impressive bit of casting. Michael Gove gets to play Prime Minister, Nicola Sturgeon acts as his deputy, and Penny Mordaunt takes Defense. Nothing says relaxing evening television quite like watching familiar political faces rehearse national collapse between ads for car insurance.
Sky argues the show performs a vital public service by demystifying crisis response and highlighting resilience. That is a fair point—until you pair it with recent reports that the British Army has had to curb actual live-fire tank exercises to save money. We have hit peak British logistics: when you can’t afford real military maneuvers, you turn them into event TV. Expect Celebrity Operating Theatre to solve the NHS backlog by spring.
The issue isn’t whether Russia knows the UK has strategic vulnerabilities; foreign intelligence agencies don’t rely on Sky’s autumn lineup for their briefs. The real issue is what happens when catastrophe becomes serialized content.
When governments warn of conflict, militaries plan for conflict, and broadcasters dramatize conflict, the vocabulary of war stops sounding catastrophic. It starts sounding scheduled:
Monday: Russia attacks.
Tuesday: COBR convenes.
Wednesday: Escalation.
Thursday: Studio panel debate.
Friday: Someone briefly remembers diplomacy exists.
Deterrence and diplomacy aren’t mutually exclusive, but diplomacy makes terrible television. No executive is greenlighting The Negotiation—a four-part thriller where tired bureaucrats spend nine months arguing over paragraph 14(b) of a treaty in a windowless room with bad coffee. Yet historically, those windowless rooms are what keep the red maps from flashing in the first place.
Preparing for a crisis is prudence. Treating the crisis as inevitable—and broadcast-ready—is something else entirely.
💬 Over to You
Is The Wargame necessary public education, or are we just formatting existential threat into prime-time noise?
If we spend this much airtime visualizing the next war, where is the serious prime-time coverage on how to prevent it?
Drop your arguments, counterpoints, and verbal hand grenades in the comments below. The sharpest responses will feature in the upcoming print edition.
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