The State

[Samuraisan]

Anyone watched it ? I don't know what I expected, but it does glamourise ISIS a bit too much I think.

[4candles]

That's the intention - then reality bites in subsequent episodes.

[-SharonA-]

Glamourise ISIS!!! Are we watching the same programme???
Covering up, virtually forced to marry, sleeping on floors, living in severe conditions, brutality.
Yes I can see the appeal off fleeing to Syria.

[Ken4155]

Just watched the first 2 episodes and it's already becoming evident that glamourising ISIS is definitely not the intention. Feet being thrashed, hands and heads chopped off. Hardly glamourous, Samuraisan.

[Peter Pedant]

yeah - mesmerised by it

no I dont think that it will make young men queue up to join. I thought it was very clear the International Brigade was indoctrinated and used as expendables.

I particularly liked the travails of the doctor
who might have done med school
but my god didnt learn from experience....
Chucked out of practice in the Hospital for a minor religious discretion- she is next scene up with the cough drops on the internet telling her sisters to roll up to the islamic paradise....

I am binge watching the first two episodes

and no one has turned around so far and wondered - my God what have I done to myself and my children !

[Peter Pedant]

does anyone know if in the spanish civil war
the international brigade was used as cannon fodder ?

[NoMercy]

I haven't watched it yet but I've got it on Series record and I am looking forward to seeing it.

[Islay]

I don't see it as glamourising ISIS at all

[anneasquith]

I'm watching it but its a TV programme quite well made, has all the ingredients , handsome men, pretty women, nice music, with bits of atrocities thrown in to make us unsettled. I don't for one second think its true to life, it does isis no harm.

[Peter Pedant]

I said to my brother - they were taking kids out there - didnt they realise what they were getting into ?
and HE said - someone took her own kids out and a selection of someone else's !

The yazdi women were sold into slavery ( light worshippers )
and I thought some of the details well thought out - the bought wife would not go into a house before her owner. - I thought there was too much light in Raqqa - a blackout since they were being bombed to obliviion I thought would be in force...

we are now down to half the complement

[Peter Pedant]

// it does isis no harm.//

er were you watching "the State" or ISIS come dancing on Ice?
or coronation street by mistake ?

[sandyRoe]

Wiki says that 15000 volunteers in the International Brigade were killed during the Spanish Civil War. It also says that the total number of volunteers was about 35000.
Does look a bit like cannon fodder.

[Samuraisan]

Yep, you are all right, I was too quick to say the program glamourises ISIS.

[anneasquith]

I maintain the programme did Isis no harm.

[douglas9401]

If nothing else it kept the decapitated head department in work for a week or two.
Otherwise hard eyes and hearts of gold from misunderstood, gullible foreigners, bruv.

[jambutty]

Watched some of it, but won't be watching again.

[ChillDoubt]

Glamourised ISIS? Not even vaguely.
It was the best anti-IS recruitment video that could possibly have been made.
Thoroughly compelling TV, it was a triumph IMHO.

[Peter Pedant]

agree chilldo....
very differing reviews in the media

half the characters are still alive - so there could be a sequel - but Jalal looks pretty stuck - could be freed by a random drone strike tho'

and the doctor - jesus didnt know they could take her kid away from her permanently ( he could be adopted - finish, end of) so pretty well obviously is gonna co operate.

[ The young kids who went with Alan Henning ( liverpool cabbie) who was decapitated - were so shocked they voluntarily cooperated with the authorities and arm twisting was NOT reqd.]

[-SharonA-]

I enjoyed this mini series and hope there is a second series. It was brutal and eye opening.

[Peter Pedant]

I understood about 90% of the dialog -

acky - instead of sir
and ukhti instead of ma'am is quite a jump

and at one point she says - "no thats not right" and I thought blimey the big fella is not gonna like that ( he didnt )

and what they are saying is different in tone to the subtitles
didnt make me want to go and join up or even say to young people this is the career for you - and yeah I agree they all get nice houses to live in which seem to maintain themselves ....

( same thing happens in Donald Pleasance's film on Janusz Korschach - the Polish dialogue is different [much more anti-semitic] than the subtitles - which are much more 'why are they being such a bugga to him?")

bereft tonight - just crip about GCSE's and BRexit and nuclear war

[naomi24]

I watched the first two episodes tonight. It doesn't glamorise but it sanitises. Unrealistically clean accommodation for one thing - and I have never, in Middle Eastern countries, seen a row of hole in the ground toilets (and I've seen some) that have ever had a whiff of bleach put near them.