Criticism Analysis: The State

Channel 4 has defended a new drama about a group of young Britons who travel to Syria to join Islamic State, saying it has been carefully researched and deals with an “important subject to confront and explore”.

The first episode followed two British men and two women who go to Syria to join Isis, where they are segregated with only the men being trained to fight, and all four are encouraged to forget their past lives in the UK.

The Daily Mail accused Kosminsky and Channel 4 of "glorifying isis" after the first episode aired days after the Spain attacks.

But the programme won the support of Charlie Winter, a senior research fellow at the international centre for the study of radicalisation at King’s College London, who has studied Isis closely. “It had very clearly been extremely well researched,” Winter said. “It certainly wasn’t superficial research going into this. I was really impressed.

“There were a lot of scenes straight from Islamic State propaganda. It was clear the researchers had watched a tonne of propaganda to make it seem as legit as possible.”

As stated by professionals and critics the state follows accurate portrayals of radicalism and terrorism, without depicting highly controversial scenes even about a highly controversial scene.

As Kosminsky said 

"Others will see it as a wilful attempt to make people who take this path more sympathetic than they should be.

"I just want people to get a more complex view of an incredibly sad and emotive subject."

This is the approach that we want to attempt, by conveying how situations like radicalism occur, through detrimental stress and constant torment through means that at face value may appear harmless and not how they are performed or who they are performed by.