THURSDAY 09 MARCH
Drama
The Road to Guantanamo
9:00pm - 10:50pm
Channel 4
VIDEO Plus+: 45850118
Subtitled
Even if the title doesn't offer you a clue, it's best to be clear that this isn't the kind of drama to enjoy as you sprawl on your sofa munching Belgian truffles. The Road to Guantanamo is hard, attention-demanding dramatic gruel, a harrowing, polemical retelling of the experiences of three friends from Tipton in the West Midlands who went to Pakistan for a wedding and, after a trip to Afghanistan, were arrested and transported to the US detention centre, Camp Delta, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They were held for more than two years without charge before being released and returned to Britain.
Michael Winterbottom, who co-directs with Mat Whitecross, isn't a man who'll ever get a sore backside from sitting on fences. He's reportedly said that The Road to Guantanamo, already a prize winner at the Berlin International Film Festival, is not anti-American, though I'd beg to differ - it can't be anything but. The Road to Guantanamo is anomalous in terms of TV drama. It's not engaging in the accepted, superficial television sense, and we learn little of its central "characters", in this case the three men whose interviews about their experiences are interspersed with the drama. It is, however, a searing evocation of a hellish place, about which we've heard much, but are told, officially, very little.
RT reviewer: Alison Graham
Shafiq - Rizwan Ahmed
Ruhel - Farhad Harun
Monir - Waqar Siddiqui
Asif - Arfan Usman
Zahid - Shahid Iqbal
US interrogator - Jason Salkey
US interrogator - Jacob Gaffney
US interrogator - Mark Holden
Military guard - Duane Henry
Military guard - William Meredith
Military guard - Payman Bina
SAS interrogator - Adam James
MI5 interrogator - Ian Hughes
Camp X-ray guard - Brian Flaherty
Camp X-ray guard - Steve Beckingham
Camp X-ray guard - Jason Schams
Camp X-ray MI5 - Jamie Buller
Embassy man - Mark Sproston
Camp X-ray interrogator - Justin Lynch
Camp X-ray interrogator - Ewan Bailey
Camp Delta interrogator - Nancy Crane
Camp Delta interrogator - Martin Mcdougall
Urdu translator - Naser Ranjha
Washington woman - Sara Stewart
Bashir - Demitri Goritsas
CIA woman - Sasha Pick
Delta guard - Andre Pitts
Delta guard - Justin Thomson
Delta guard - Tom Whitecross
.