The Undeclared War

This article is about the 2022 television series. For the 1990 film, see Undeclared War. For a type of military conflict, see Undeclared war.

The Undeclared War
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Genre	Thriller
Written by	Peter Kosminsky
Theme music composer	Debbie Wiseman
Composer	Debbie Wiseman
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original languages	English Russian
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	6
Production
Executive producers	Peter Kosminsky Colin Callender Noëlette Buckley
Producer	Robert Jones
Cinematography	Gavin Finney
Editor	David Blackmore
Production companies	Playground Entertainment Stonehenge Films Universal International Studios
Original release
Network	Channel 4 Peacock
Release	30 June (2022-06-30) – 4 August 2022 (2022-08-04)

The Undeclared War is a British near-future thriller television miniseries, aired from 30 June 2022 on Channel 4. The series is written by Peter Kosminsky. Channel 4 announced on 12 February 2025 that a second series consisting of six episodes would be produced.

Plot

The series follows two main characters, Saara Parvin in the UK and Vadim Trusov in Russia, during a cyber and misinformation attack upon the UK.

Parvin has just started a one-year student-placement at GCHQ when a cyber-attack takes down some of the UK Internet and she joins the team examining the code of the malware. She is praised when she discovers a second attack within the code and a diligent search for a third attack doesn't find one.

Meanwhile, she feels alienated within GCHQ but makes friends with John Yeabsley, who spends his lunch-time correcting the grammar of other people's blogs. He, in turn, says how alienating it is to not be able to talk about his work outside. We later find that Parvin has not told her family where she is working and her brother is appalled when she finally tells him.

Trusov had attended a class with Parvin in London and when he returns to Russia he starts working for Russia's Twitter-misinformation campaign, but when the UK crash the facility as reprisal for the malware he reluctantly joins the offensive malware department.

Russia escalates the attack and incites unrest in the UK by interfering with the reporting of a general election, whereupon the UK remotely destroys some Russian arms dumps. Russia exaggerate the damage and uses it as a pretext for isolating GCHQ from the NSA by leaking NSA software from a UK site.

Trusov eventually reveals that this was all planned by Russia and he deliberately and openly leaks all the Russian software to GCHQ as a gift that the UK can use to appeal for help from the USA just as the tit-for-tat reprisals become overtly physical. In the last scene, Parvin stands stricken with grief because Trusov has sacrificed himself.

Cast

• Hannah Khalique-Brown as Saara Parvin, a second-year computer science student
• Simon Pegg as Danny Patrick, GCHQ Head of Operations
• Maisie Richardson-Sellers as Kathy Freeman, an NSA analyst detailed to GCHQ
• Edward Holcroft as James Cox, a teacher and Saara's live-in boyfriend
• Adrian Lester as Prime Minister Andrew Makinde
• Alex Jennings as David Neal, Director of GCHQ
• Mark Rylance as John Yeabsley, a longtime employee of GCHQ
• Alfie Friedman as Gabriel Davies, a GCHQ mathematician and code breaker
• Kerry Godliman as Angie McMurray, the head of Russia Global News (RGN) in the UK
• German Segal as Vadim Trusov, a Russian programmer, and the son of a wealthy and influential Russian arms dealer, from whom Vadim is estranged
• Joss Porter as Phil, a GCHQ analyst
• Tinatin Dalakishvili as Marina Veselova, a Russian journalist and single mother

Episodes

No.	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original release date	U.K. viewers (millions)
1	"Episode 1"	Peter Kosminsky	Peter Kosminsky Declan Lawn Adam Patterson	30 June 2022 (2022-06-30)	2.13
2	"Episode 2"	Peter Kosminsky	Declan Lawn Adam Patterson Amelia Spencer	7 July 2022 (2022-07-07)	1.18
3	"Episode 3"	Peter Kosminsky	Declan Lawn Adam Patterson Amelia Spencer	14 July 2022 (2022-07-14)	N/A
4	"Episode 4"	Peter Kosminsky	Declan Lawn Adam Patterson Amelia Spencer	21 July 2022 (2022-07-21)	N/A
5	"Episode 5"	Peter Kosminsky	Declan Lawn Adam Patterson Amelia Spencer	28 July 2022 (2022-07-28)	N/A
6	"Episode 6"	Peter Kosminsky	Declan Lawn Adam Patterson Amelia Spencer	4 August 2022 (2022-08-04)	N/A

Release

In the United States, the series was released on Peacock.

Reception

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 69% of 26 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.4/10.

Controversy

The show's June 2022 adverts were inspired by the panic-provoking 1938 radio adaption of The War of the Worlds, and subject to complaints to the UK broadcasting regulator Ofcom due to the adverts being broadcast as if they were live news broadcasts. The few complainants had focused on the fact that the Prime Minister himself had appeared on screen – seemingly unable to discern that it was black actor Adrian Lester, in a country which has never had a black PM, rather than actual caucasian PM Boris Johnson, then in his third year in office – which had made them panic about a pending attack. Ofcom simply acknowledged that the complaints had been received, and no further comments were ever issued by the organisation.

Music

The music in series was assembled by Debbie Wiseman and most notably included in several places throughout the series a folk adaptation of the Cossack lament written by Nikolai Verevkin, Under the green willow (or Black Raven). The version in the show was provided by the London-based singers Evelyn Bates and Violet Verigo whose rendition is influenced by Pelageya's performance.

See also

• Cyberwarfare by Russia

External links

• The Undeclared War at IMDb