Informer Review

Informer was a BBC miniseries described as a character-driven thriller which lasted for six episodes.

Raza (Nabhaan Rizwan) is young British-Pakistani whose is is forced to infiltrate a terrorist cell by Gabe Waters (Paddy Considine), a detective for the Met’s Counter Terrorism unit. Gabe promises Raza that his mother would get a British passport if he’s successful, but if he refuses she would be deported to Pakistan. Raza has to face various dangerous people and gain their trust whilst Gabe struggles with his own past.

Informer biggest attribute was its cast. Considine is a fantastic character actor who had the best role, being a cop with divided loyalties because of his past undercover. His colleagues question his psychological state and he befriended some of the people he was investigating. His story was more interesting in the series. Emerging star Bel Powley was outstanding as Gabe’s new partner – Holly Morten who starts to question Gabe’s loyalties and has to do two investigations, one on the terrorist cell, the other about Gabe on her own volition. She gave her role the right balance of professionalism, ability, and naivety. Informer gave Rizwan’s first major role as an actor and he shows a lot of promise – his character has the big arc of being a young happy-go-lucky, decent-hearted whose new role leads to him having a strained relationship with his family. He should have a good career on British TV.

The series also had a solid supporting cast, featuring the likes of Jessica Raine (Fortitude), Sunetra Sarker (Casualty, Ackley Bridge) and Sharon D. Clarke (Doctor Who). Arsher Ali was a trust standout as another undercover cop who is able to blend in most places yet when he’s with the police speaks with an extremely posh accent.

The series had a strong hook – the first episode starts with a terrorist attack on a cafe which serves as a framing device. The scenes at the cafe perfectly captured the terror and tension being in a situation like this. It did lead to some shocking twists.

Informer smashes up two plots into the story. Thematically they are connected by the themes of trust and characters not being sure who they are. Yet both stories dragged the show out – they could have been feature-length films. The first three episodes were actually a drag to sit through. The series does pick up in the second half but not enough to truly elevate the show. A strength of the miniseries format was it did allow show more of the personal drama like the tensions within Gabe’s marriage and Raza’s family because of their double lives. But the series also had to prolong the drama to fill the episodes. The worst example of this was when the police discovered MI6 were investigating the same terrorist cell. It was plot development that led nowhere.

Informer had two great potential stories that could have worked as independent projects which ended up cancelling each other out. The actors gave it their all and the series was watchable but the BBC had made much better thrillers recently.