| Genre: | Drama Thriller Science fiction Adventure Mystery |
| Producer: | Gub Neal, Rebecca Eaton (for WGBH) |
| Director: | Iain B. MacDonald |
| Starring: | Benedict Cumberbatch Anamaria Marinca Max Beesley Robert Carlyle Eva Birthistle Geraldine James Chipo Chung Tom Fisher James Lance San Shella David Harewood Christopher Fulford Paul Higgins Nick Sidi |
| Composer: | Magnus Fiennes |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Company: | BOX TV Limited WGBH Boston |
| Executive Producer: | Patrick Irwin Justin Thomson-Glover Adrian Bate |
| Location: | London, UK; Bucharest, Romania |
| Camera: | John Hembrough |
| Runtime: | 85 minutes (Episode 1); 60 minutes (Episodes 2–5) |
| Network: | BBC One |
| Num Series: | 1 |
| Num Episodes: | 5 |
The Last Enemy is a five-part BBC television drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch and featuring Robert Carlyle and Max Beesley. It first aired on 17 February 2008.
Set in a recognisable, near-future London beset by terrorism and illegal immigration, The Last Enemy features the introduction of "TIA" (Total Information Awareness), a centralised database that can be used to track and monitor anybody, by putting all government and corporate – i.e. credit card and bank activity, phone use, internet use, purchases, rentals, etc. – information in one place.
The story deals with a political cover-up of a sanctioned but secret medical experiment run amok with key members of the government trying desperately to hide all evidence of their experimental batch of vaccine that seems to be causing a deadly virus. The complex story unspools to reveal the moral, social and privacy concerns of this hypothetical TIA system in a post-7/7 world, including such control mechanisms familiar to both real life and science fiction as retinal scans, fingerprint identification and ubiquitous camera and mobile phone surveillance footage.
The story is told through the eyes of a mathematical genius, Stephen Ezard, who is portrayed as a recluse showing some signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The shy genius overcomes his inhibitions to burrow into a highly compromised British government using his brilliance and their TIA system only to find himself ultimately trapped by the people he most trusts and to learn he is a pawn in manipulative Security State machinations which take the people he most loves from him and compromise him forever.
| Episode number | Original airing | Total viewers | Audience share (average) | Season viewer average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 17 February 2008 | 4.2m[1] | 18% | 2.7m |
| 2 | 24 February 2008 | 2.5m[2] | 10% | |
| 3 | 2 March 2008 | 2.3m[3] | 9.4% | |
| 4 | 9 March 2008 | 2.5m[4] | 10% | |
| 5 | 16 March 2008 | 2m[5] | 8% | |