Very evocative and interesting as a period piece, but makes for tedious viewing as a sermon on the (potential) horrors of the modern world. Pleasingly designed and filmed in black and white, like a very, very bleak Doctor Who episode (which is recommendation enough for me). The fascistic regime in the bunker is well delineated in the first third, if rather heavy handed, the near silent sequences in the hydroponic gardens at the climax are memorable, but on the whole it is too unengaging and detached, with a thuddingly obvious simplistic message that our warlike ways will have us all for the high jump if we don't buck up our ideas. The notion of nuclear war is too remote and couched in SF trappings here. It's admirable that the show touched on the subject at all in such an uncompromising fashion. That's to be applauded, but compared with the nearly contemporary The War Game (which the BBC commisioned but wouldn't show), Level Seven seems trifling indeed. Without the shocking force and versimilitude of that film, and with little in the way of gripping drama in it's place, the end result here is rather stodgy. The War Game placed events in the present or immediate near future. Level Seven takes place in an unspecified but radically different future. The War Game also brought a necessary genuine howl of despairing rage to the party - Level Seven, as with several other nuclear dramas, ends up a rather trite sermon - it brings one of the most pressing issues of our existence down to the level of 'people do bad things - everyone suffers, and the characetrs spend the remainder of the play looking pained & noble until they drop dead'.
Review of Level Seven
