Secret State (Season 1)

Secret State (2012) is a four-part Channel 4 political thriller you can watch online on iFILM. A catastrophic explosion at an American-owned petrochemical plant kills workers and raises questions that nobody in government seems eager to answer. Gabriel Byrne plays Tom Dawkins, a deputy prime minister suddenly elevated to the top job and stubborn enough to keep pulling threads.

Adapted from Chris Mullin's 1982 novel A Very British Coup, the series maps a world where elected government, corporate money, and banking interests have grown so tangled that accountability becomes nearly fictional. Charles Dance and Stephen Dillane round out the cast. Directed by Ed Fraiman. Compact, cold, and free of speechifying — it trusts the audience to connect the dots. Stream Secret State (2012) online on iFILM.