Summer of Rockets offers up an intriguing premise, a classy cast, gorgeous locations and costumes and, best of all - or so one might have thought - another intelligent and provocative story and script from Stephen Poliakoff. And over the first few episodes it seems to deliver. One assumes the unsettling questions raised are planted deliberately to engage and intrigue. And, if you're feeling generous, one might also assume the stilted, stagey dialogue is also a conscious ploy to lend the proceedings an unreal, unsettling edge. But it all-too-quickly becomes apparent that Summer of Rockets amounts to considerably less than the sum of its parts, and the biggest problem is Poliakoff's cartoonish approach to 1950s British politics and espionage, and a view of British class and culture that has all the intelligence and sophistication of Enid Blyton. By the final episode Rockets degenerates into bizarre self-parody, with plot developments that defy credulity. I will mention just one (spoiler!). In the midst of a highly-secret meeting to plan the overthrow of the government one of the key conspirators turns on a TV comedy show that just happens to be broadcasting a satire of the insurgents' clandestine military games, and the exposure scuttles their plans. This one plot development contains so much that is illogical, inconsistent and implausible that it positively boggles the mind. Why on earth would enemy agents in the midst of planning a military coup bother to interrupt proceedings for a spot of TV comedy? Why would a TV comedy show broadcast a satire of something so secret that the general public will have no idea who the targets are or what it's all about? And why would a comic sledging on TV cause a well-funded, well-organised and highly-motivated group to abandon already advanced plans for the coup? None of it makes any sense at all, and the more you think about it the more ludicrous it all seems. If there's any reason to keep watching, then it's Toby Stephens, who gives an entrancing performance as Samuel Petrukhin, a Russian emigre who is, or would like to think he is, more English than the English. Stephens is both bold and subtle, and recognisably human even when hardly any of the characters surrounding him are. He really does a sterling job of rising above the material. As for the rest of the leading players - Keeley Hawes, Linus Roache, Timothy Spall - they also deserve plaudits, if only for keeping straight faces.
Review of Summer of Rockets
