I normally give made-for-TV political movies the swerve because they often come across as the middle-brow equivalent of those cash-in movies around Royal Weddings ie a bunch of faintly teak-like actors chewing their way through a dreadful script. Make no mistake this definitely has a whiff of that at times and the opening montage of news clips - including an extended and unwelcome reminder of the Thatcher years - did nothing to help dispel that feeling.
But I was attracted by the focus on the Leave camp's use of analytics and digital advertising to identify and target voters with personalised messages in Obama-on-steriods style campaign as well as the Cassandra like personality behind it all. It didn't disappoint as I recognised much of myself in Cumberbatch's Dominic Cummings. While sharing his lack of dress sense - I'm hopefully not as borderline sociopathic as him and certainly not as clever. But I've had similar if less well-formed visions of the future of digital campaigning and heard the same scepticism from others who don't get it. There was a lot of mental table thumping while watching this.
I also appreciated Cummings' man in the pub approach to gathering insights. It was from similar experiences while living in the frozen North of Watford tendency that I became aware of a massive gap between it and London in particular. The social-cultural-economic divide is massive and there are a lot of disenfranchised people out there who neither like the direction their life is going in, have no particular attachment to the status quo and are up for giving the establishment a bloody nose because they feel they have nothing to lose. Successive politicians and the media in their attempt to scapegoat the EU for the various ills of the world has hardly helped. The Remain camp's focus group scenes in the movie give wonderful and at times desperate life to the differences.
Finally, tip of the hat to Cumberbatch. It's by far the strongest performance and together with the occasional bit of sparkling dialogue and canny direction lifts it well above the average Hallmark movie.
Verdict: It's no Sorkin, but still worth a watch as an introduction to data driven digital campaigning.
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