# COBRA (2020)

> When nationwide power outages threaten lives, the UK's COBRA committee of experts and politicians must find a way to turn the lights back on.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/81481

## Facts

- Seasons: 3
- Episodes: 18
- Episode runtime: 44 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama, thriller
- Network: Sky One, Sky Max
- Cast: Robert Carlyle, Victoria Hamilton, Richard Dormer, David Haig, Marsha Thomason, Lucy Cohu, Alexa Davies, Grace Hogg-Robinson
- TMDB rating: 6.6/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10062652/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: brisk
- Intensity: moderate
- Complexity: dense
- Violence: mild
- Tone: tense, anxious, claustrophobic, grounded

## What critics say

Critics broadly regard COBRA as a tense, well-acted political thriller that handles its national crisis premise with grounded urgency, though reception across its three seasons is modest.

## Synopsis

COBRA (2020-2023) is a British television political thriller series created for Sky One and Sky Max. Robert Carlyle plays Robert Sutherland, a figure at the center of the Cabinet Office Briefing Room committee, alongside Victoria Hamilton as Anna Marshall, David Haig as Archie Glover-Morgan, and Marsha Thomason as Francine Bridge. When widespread power outages spread chaos across the country and threaten lives, the committee of the nation's leading experts and politicians gathers in a windowless room to find a way to restore the grid. The engine of each episode is the pressure of competing advice, shrinking time, and the public fallout of every decision. The series runs across three seasons of six episodes each, with each season presenting a fresh national emergency handled as one continuing crisis. Set in the present-day United Kingdom, it plays as a tense, procedural drama in which the characters' private lives bleed into their public duties. Its mood is anxious, grounded, and claustrophobic, with the corridors of power carrying a steady dread. Fans of Designated Survivor, Spin, and Contagion will find resonance in its crisis-room tension and its portrait of officials under strain.

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