Blackout.

What would happen if Britain’s national electricity grid was attacked? If the entire population was plunged into darkness and filmed as each day without power went by? Blackout explores these questions using fictional scenes united with actual footage from previous blackouts across Britain. Footage which really made me have disbelief towards the inhabitants of this country.

I suppose it’s everyone’s hope that should a predicament like a national blackout happen the population would join together and look out for one another. There was an element of this in the film but it was drowned out by the floods of violent recordings repeatedly being presented. What scared me most is that a lot of what we see was taken from real events. Much of the program was authentic, was real, and did actually happen. 

As something written for TV I enjoyed watching different people from around England react to the Blackout in different ways, some prepared and fighting hard for survival, others seeing it as an opportunity to loot and be violent. However, as a message being put across so publicly to society, it disgusted me. The idea of people turning against each other in such a horrific crisis instead of teaming up to help one another made my stomach flip. Anarchy on the streets as the actors fought to protect their own safety and that of their families. I felt unsafe in my own home, feeling like just outside my door people were hungry for such an incident to happen so they can feed on violence and crime. The judgement put on the people of England was unfair and has me questioning whether those sorts of offences would actually take place. 

In the light of day, having digested what I’ve seen I think the programme makes you stop and think about what you would do should something like that happen. The actors succeeded in being mostly believable with their actions, however I definitely thought ‘as if you would do that’ during several decisions made by the cast. 

I am finding it difficult to realise reasons to rate this documentary highly. What I saw was effective but was also based on a really awful theory that the people of England would be so badly behaved in a Blackout and turn on each other. Nothing was revealed as to why the Blackout happened, which was a shame as that was advertised in the trailers as being a big mystery and hinted at the viewers being rewarded with a conclusion. Some of the occurrences were so unrealistic too, like phone batteries lasting a week without being charged. The writer clearly feels that us British have an addiction to our phones and document everything we do. It just seems as though the intention was quite simply to inject fear into the people of England, which is why this documentary, in my eyes, wasn’t a success.

2/5.