Not convinced we need more defence funding? Watch this alarming series: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Sky One's The Wargame

Sky One

The Wargame

Rating:

There's a moment of profound despair in Dennis Potter's 50-year-old BBC play Brimstone And Treacle, when heartbroken father Denholm Elliott stares out of the window and prays aloud, 'Drop the bomb!'

After watching three hours of The Real Rooneys on Disney+, I thought I knew how he felt. But the inexorable progress of The Wargame towards apocalypse, in what Nicola Sturgeon described as a 'death spiral' for Britain, swiftly changed my mind.

This four-part military and political exercise seemed ripe for mockery before it aired. It's difficult to imagine the democratic malfunction that could deliver Michael Gove as PM, Ms Sturgeon as his deputy and Harriet Harman as Home Secretary.

What calamity struck the rest of Westminster to make this possible, we were not told, but it did transpire that some unnamed rivals, backed with Kremlin cash, were attempting to organise a coup. 

Whoever they were, they could argue they were obliged to act on humanitarian grounds.

The Wargame depicted a conflict between Russia and the UK that rapidly escalated to missile attacks on London and other British cities. By the start of episode four, the Cabinet was evacuating the COBRA HQ and heading for a nuclear bunker.

I really wanted them to travel in Nicola's ex-husband's motorhome, not a motorcade, but by this point I'd lost the urge to take the mickey. This well-constructed, forceful and convincing scenario was too alarming to be dismissed.

Its central message was that Britain is all but defenceless. Unlike Ukraine and Israel, which have sophisticated anti-missile air defences, we have only the RAF and a couple of operational destroyers at sea. 

In this imaginary scenario, their main purpose had to be defending airfields and naval bases. The civilian population were hopelessly vulnerable.

The retired politicians played versions of themselves: Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt hawkish, Sturgeon pleading for de-escalation. Gove was paralysed by politeness, unable to take charge until everyone else had finished speaking.

The Left-wingers lamented that the world wasn't meant to be like this, and wondered if, contrary to all their instincts, it might have been a good idea to spend more on defence. 

Meanwhile, the Russians were efficiently flooding our social media with deep-fake propaganda videos, stirring up riots and calling us the aggressors.

Anthony Scaramucci, as Secretary of State in Washington, was laughing up his sleeve at our pitiful inability to fight back without American support, which was withheld. 

The US was three years late for the First World War, of course, and two years late for the Second, so why anyone expects them to offer prompt assistance next time has always baffled me.

'Nato, as a functioning alliance,' growled the chief of the defence staff, 'is dead in the water.'

Watch The Wargame. If it doesn't convince you we need to fund defence, nothing will.