The Gamechangers

We must first of all come clean and say that if the target audience for this drama about the Grand Theft Auto controversy are those who have a close relationship with GTA and games generally, then we are not it.  Dan is part-qualified and Ali only vicariously by male friends and relatives.  This, therefore, is a review from a layman's perspective.

It's great that BBC2 are investing in one-off 90-minute dramas, and investing heavily enough to get Daniel Radcliffe and Bill Paxton on board.  It also has a British perspective, as Rockstar, the brainy outfit behind GTA's success, are - or were in 2002 - a group of Englishmen in NYC.  This is basically the tale of a battle of wills between the young game designers, with huge commercial success on their side, and the moral crusader who ended up with very little on his.  Does a game that brings a fantasy of sex and violence in gangland USA influence players to the extent that they think little of extending that casual brutality to their offline lives?  It isn't a question that has been thoroughly answered, so it largely depends on where your sympathies lie.  The fact that most people who play don't gun down their neighbours does not, for many, relieve the responsibility of the game for the few who do.

This followed a pretty predictable route and covered all the usual angles - the thrill of invention and innovation; the fallout, violent and otherwise, on those who immerse themselves in an online world, and the pressure on the home life of the man who very publicly campaigned against the game's licence.  The characters involved were portrayed fairly (as opposed to accurately, on which we can't comment), with as much screen time given to Paxton's unyielding anger and frankly bonkers fellow churchgoers as to the petty squabbles and patronising absurdity of the design team when exploring the mean streets 'for authenticity'.  Luckily - of-course - the threat dissipated when the local lads turned out to be avid fans of GTA, seeing the depiction of their world, with added gloss and gore, not as exploitation but as simple fame.

Despite the modern morality tale and the sympathetically human characters, however, this is rather uninteresting if you're not into games, and on that level it failed to transcend its major drawback in a way that superb dramas - 'Marvellous' with football and 'Longitude' with science spring to mind - need to speak to a mass audience.