The Singapore Grip (Season 1)

The Singapore Grip (2020) is a BBC miniseries you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Tom Vaughan and based on J.G. Farrell's 1978 novel. Singapore, 1941: rubber merchant Walter Blackett (David Morrissey) is doing very well, and he's entirely sure the war on the other side of the world won't reach his business.

His partner Mr. Webb is gravely ill, which gives Walter a pressing reason to lock in the firm's future — ideally by marrying his idealistic son Matthew (Luke Treadaway) to his sharp, unsentimental daughter Joan. Matthew has other ideas. He's fallen for Vera Chang (Elizabeth Tan), a Chinese refugee whom the entire Blackett social set would rather pretend doesn't exist. While the family argues about capital and contracts, Japanese forces close in on the island. In February 1942, roughly 80,000 British and Allied troops surrendered — the largest capitulation in British military history.

Farrell's novel skewered the blind self-confidence of colonial Britain, and Tom Vaughan's adaptation keeps that edge. Morrissey and Jane Horrocks lean into the absurdity just enough. Stream The Singapore Grip (2020) online on iFILM.