If one wants to make a political point, the “what if…?” narrative device can be fantastically effective. Even Marvel Comics used it to wonder what might have been if third-party candidate Captain America defeated Reagan and Carter to become president.
In Jack Womack’s brilliant Ambient series — which includes his 1995 work Random Acts of Senseless Violence — the author savagely dissected our present even as his books revolved around a near-future collapse of the American empire. The CBS TV series Jericho posed a similar, if simpler, question. Alas, its answer — a nuke attack would turn the US into Iraq — proved too hardcore for mainstream viewers and it has been cancelled. Again.
For Canadians, the biggest question is: what if we joined the United States? In CBC’s new miniseries The Trojan Horse we have our answer (or, rather, one possible answer).
Co-written, exec-produced and starring former TV mountie Paul Gross — Due South, Slings & Arrows — Trojan Horse is a sequel to H20, his “set five minutes in the future” political thriller which introduced the character of Tom McLaughlin. After the assassination of McLaughlin’s prime-minister pop, the son is sworn in as Canada’s new leader and proceeds to sell our precious water resources to the well-armed but drought-stricken south.
Thanks to those tightening of ties, this stand-alone sequel kicks off with a Canadian referendum to join the US — a vote that nets a none-too-subtle 49/51 split turning the Great White North into the 51st through 56th states. The image of the stars and stripes flying atop parliament hill is an undeniably powerful one.
But US imperialism extends beyond the North American continent. The president is tilting towards invading Saudi Arabia, facing a Chinese-funded Al-Qaeda assault on the House of Saud.
In hopes of avoiding a nuclear showdown with China, European intelligence (alongside a Rupert Murdoch-esque media baron) have concocted a conspiracy rife with faked assassinations, rigged voting machines, clandestine surveillance, a kidnapped ambassador (for some October Crisis allusions) and a sad-eyed black-ops agent played by The Wire’s Clark Johnson. Their goal is to install a friendly face in the Oval Office with Tom McLaughlin as their titular Trojan horse. Running as a no-blood-for-oil independent, they figure he can win since “Ross Perot took 19 per cent of the vote [in 1992] — and he was visibly insane.”
Though motivated by vengeance (“they took my country, I’ll take theirs”) McLaughlin’s leftist desire is to turn America into a global citizen — abide by international treaties and “quiet the drums of war.” The ends are almost enough to make you forgive his duplicitous, anti-democratic and occasionally murderous means. Similarly, President Stanfield (Tom Skerritt) seems like a decent enough bloke, despite his war-mongering and Karl Rove-ian chief of staff (Saul Rubinek).
Knowing they couldn’t produce anything as tension-ratcheting as 24, the action on The Trojan Horse is doled out methodically, taking a back seat to the political machinations — perfect for folks addicted to the ongoing Obama-Clinton dust-up.
This morally ambivalent vision of our potential future is a rather ballsy one, at least up until an infuriatingly silly Scooby Doo–esque climax threatens to expose The Trojan Horse as an empty shell.
THE TROJAN HORSE AIRS MARCH 30 & APRIL 6 AT 8PM ON CBC.
Adams Family
If your political thirst still isn’t slaked, consider HBO’s gritty miniseries John Adams. Based on a Pulitzer Prize–winning biography, this epic about America’s second president stars the ever-schlubby Paul Giamatti (decked out in ridiculous Revolutionary War–era fashions) as an oft-overlooked founding father who even describes himself as “obnoxious, suspected and unpopular.” It’s a smallpox-and-all glimpse of Adams — farmer, diplomat, intellectual, lawyer, politician, arrogant prick — as he helps his fledgling nation survive its blood-soaked birth. Of course, Ben Franklin still comes off cooler.
JOHN ADAMS AIRS SUNDAYS, 9PM ON TMN.