Olivia Colman Joins Reimagined Future-Set ‘Army of Shadows’
Channel 4 fills out the future resistance in the forthcoming 'Army of Shadows'.
It’s been 85 years since World War II was declared in the U.S., and yet the specter of the fight between fascist nationalism and an open democratic society has never really left us. For a long time, historians believed this was because the public viewed it as “the last good war,” where we (America, the U.K., etc.) were on the winning side. But the white supremacy that drove Nazi Germany never really disappeared; it just went underground, expressed in dogwhistles and plausible deniability. It lay in wait until our society forgot for a minute to be vigilant about who we put in charge of our governments.
Nowadays, the World War II obsession is less about it being the “last good war” and more like “the past is prologue,” or perhaps “history does not repeat, but it often rhymes.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, those most effective at mining the past for models for our near future seem to be the Europeans, watching aghast as America collapses the same way Germany did a century ago.
The latest to join the lineup is Channel 4’s remake of Army of Shadows. The 1969 French film, titled L’Armée des Ombres in its home country, was written and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, based on Joseph Kessel’s 1943 book of the same name. deeply controversial when it was released, both for its pointed parable of the rise of nationalism in the U.K. during that era, and for the unflinching realism with which it treated the French Resistance, as a bleak and unromantic movement where most of those who participated were killed. In fact, the film gained such a reputation that it wasn’t released in the U.S. until 2006. (The A.V. Club named it one of the best movies of that year.)
The new version resets the action to a near-future U.K., where the country is “under occupation.” (Whether this is due to a Reform landslide in 2029, the U.S. deciding to conquer Canada and Europe, or some other disturbingly plausible scenario is not yet known.) But the Resistance is as bleak now as it was then.
Here’s the new series synopsis:
Britain looks almost normal, but the flags are different, the news is careful, and nobody says certain things out loud anymore. But everyone can feel it. Somewhere beneath the surface of ordinary life, something has gone terribly, quietly wrong. Out of the shadows emerges a former soldier known only as Berry, who starts building a secret resistance network. He knows one thing above all else: don’t act before you’re ready. An unlikely group starts to coalesce around him - people who’ve decided they can’t look away any longer: a soldier, a student, a radiographer, a journalist. Ordinary people, with ordinary lives, making an extraordinary and irreversible choice.
Against them: a state with unlimited reach, a ruthless minister who’ll do whatever it takes to maintain “order”, and an American intelligence operative called Jessie, who is very, very good at her job. Army of Shadows is a tense, propulsive thriller about what resistance actually costs. If your country were occupied, what would you do?
The previously revealed topline cast includes Paddy Considine (House of the Dragon), Alex Hassell (Rivals), Kit Harington (Game of Thrones), and American actor America Ferrera (Barbie). The new cast announcement includes Olivia Colman (The Night Manager), Leila Farzad (I Hate Suzie), Luther Ford (Criminal Record), Amara Okereke (Andor), Patrick O’Kane (Doctor Who), Anjli Mohindra (The Lazarus Project), Ed Ashley (Knight of the Seven Kingdoms), Zoë Telford (The Crow Girl), and American actor Susan Sarandon (Feud: Bette and Joan).
Series creator Ronan Bennett (The Day of the Jackal) is currently slated to pen all six episodes; director Lisa Gunning (Black Doves) will helm all installments, with Alison Sterling producing. Bennett also executive produces alongside Paul Gilbert & M-K Kennedy for StudioCanal Television; Ron Halpern & Joe Naftalin for StudioCanal; and Stephen Wright & Michael Jackson for Two Cities Television. The series has been developed and produced with the support of the Melville family and the Kessel estate, which the Irish Red Cross controls.
Filming for Army of Shadows is currently underway in Manchester, with on-location shoots in Liverpool, London and Paris. No American distributor has been announced.
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