Britz

2007
Britz

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1

EP1 Sohails Story Oct 31, 2007

A young Muslim Brit, Sohail is ambitious and university educated. His desire to assimilate into every aspect of contemporary British culture sees him driven into the open arms of MI5 where his first assignment is to help track down a terrorist cell linked to the July 7th London bombers. The enquiry leads him back to his own community in Bradford where no one, not even his closest friends, is above suspicion. Unsure if he is being used to entrap his own, Sohail is forced to question where his loyalties really lie, with the Pakistani Muslim community or with the country of his birth, England.

EP2 Nasimas Story Nov 01, 2007

Concluding episode of Peter Kosminksy's BAFTA award winning two-part drama about a brother and sister, British-born and Muslim, who are pulled in different directions by their conflicting personal experiences in post 9/11 Britain.
7.8| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 31 October 2007 Ended
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Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/B/britz/index.html
Synopsis

Two British-born Muslim siblings are drawn in radically different directions after 9/11.

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Reviews

andy-168-53555 Finished watching Britz and it was excellent on all levels. Another example of Kosminsky portraying multi layers of a complex, deep rooted, fragile sociopolitical issue (as he did so consummately in The Promise). He shows major flaws in opposing cultures but also wills the audience to see things from more than one perspective. By telling the story of cause and effect then revenge, on an individual's level, he portrays the bigger picture brilliantly.
rudeboy_murray I watched the entire four hours plus of Britz in one bum-numbing session. It delivers exactly what you expect from a Channel 4 mini-series – hard-hitting, topical, well-made edgy drama. Sadly it is also overwritten, more than a little preachy, and some of the acting is uneven.Episode one, Sohail's story, plays like an endlessly drawn-out episode of Spooks. It has it's moments, and Riz Ahmed is rather good, but the highlights are few and far between, and an awful lot of scenes feel padded. Part two, Nasima's story, is more compelling and at the same time more predictable. The ending is a long time coming and you may spot it a mile off, yet the motivations and attitudes set up for the character lead one to feel that the outcome doesn't ring true. I won't give away the game, but I didn't entirely buy it.This is the first of Kosminsky's celebrated contemporary dramas I've seen and while the quality of his writing and the power of the subject matter are enough to maintain interest for much of the story, it's hard not to feel he could have achieved more at half the length.
paul2001sw-1 'Britz' attempts to look at the psychology of contemporary British Muslims, a worthy subject in the age of suicide bombings. Two siblings feature in this drama, and both are viewed with sympathy: a man who joins the security service, and his sister, who become a terrorist. Unfortunately, episode one, centred on the former, is plain daft. MI5 is presented much as it is in 'Spooks': beautiful people, high tech-gadgetry, and a general air of cool. It didn't convince me one iota as real, and seemed as littered with false detail like a bad sci-fi film: for example, we see implausible network analysis graphics on the screens of the agents, whose sinister form was presumably preferred to taking any real network analysis package and putting a real network through it. It's still amazing to me that in the 21st century, films try to impress by simulating imagined computer technology with mock-ups less impressive than the real thing. This point may sound like a geekish digression, but it illustrates a more fundamental truth: that the world we see is a false one, right down to the old cliché of the supposed desk officer going out to find the terrorists by himself when his bosses won't believe him.Episode two, his sister's story, isn't as silly, but I didn't find that it completely convinced me that the character, who seems rational and sarcastic, would actually end her own life. The suggestion is made that she acts out of anger rather than religious belief; but I am uncertain whether a sane, intelligent and secular human being can really take a decision to commit suicide; her experiences, although tough, do not justify the extreme nihilism of her position. The aim is undoubtedly to make us understand the mind of a bomber; but while Nasira is understandable , she loses plausibility as a result. Additionally, the drama in both episodes is often heavy-handed, rather clumsily making its points. But 'Britiz' is not rubbish. In places, its an interestingand thoughtful look at certain aspects of life in Britain and Pakistan that are often unreported. But in its efforts to make a bigger statement about a greater and more terrifying mystery, this ambitious film over-reaches itself.
neil1690 The first part was good. The brother character was full of common sense and his rise through MI5 was compulsive viewing.The plot started to unravel in the second part. A policeman threatens to shove a ham sandwich down her throat. British policemen are politically correct to the point of ridicule. Then, she wears the headscarf on a bus in Bradford, which is strongly Asian. No-one will sit next to her. As if.It's unclear why the sister took the course of action that she did. Her arguments originally come from a civil liberties standpoint. But then out of the blue she becomes a suicide bomber, acting for people who have no concept of civil liberties whatsoever. What did it for me was the suicide tape at the end when the sister tells us all that we are responsible for her actions. How dare C4 repeat the lies of these extremists?Perhaps they should be reminded that the goal of Al Queda is to turn the world into an Islamic super-state. The first role of the terrorist is to portray themselves as the victim. Nobody thought to tell the writer.