I love a British mystery as much as, if not more than, the next guy, but I could barely make it through Collateral on Netflix. It was like they had a social justice checklist and created a storyline around it, then added in some extra characters to check the boxes they'd missed.
It was mostly a show about border security and immigration reform in Europe, but every major player had at least one SJW issue tied to their character, from gay clergy to Syrian refugees and illegal immigrants, sexual assault in the military and anti-Israeli sentiment.
The Victim: It all starts with the murder of a pizza delivery man in London. The victim, Abdullah Asif (Sam Otto), was posing as a Syrian refugee but, as it turns out, he was actually an illegal immigrant from Iraq. He wasn't just a pizza delivery man, either. He was also delivering drugs along with the food.
The Bystander: The person ordering the pizza (and drugs) was Karen Mars (Billie Piper), an Englishwoman who grew up in the Middle East and had been "bombed out of my house by Israeli shelling" as a child.
The Politician: Mars' ex-husband is David Mars (John Simm), a Member of Parliament for the Labour Party. He is, apparently, supposed to be our moral compass, telling us all how terrible it is to want to know who is in the country and why.
Reporter: What’s your reaction to the overnight news that Asif wasn’t, in fact, an asylum seeker?
David: Ok, so he turned out to be an economic migrant, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t entitled to the full protection of the law.
Reporter: But it is different, isn’t it?
David: Can’t we just say he was a human being who was shot down on a British street? It doesn’t matter where he came from. We really are turning into a nasty little country. And isn’t it time we had an immigration policy that wasn’t just crass xenophobia? I’ve been arguing for some time that we need to fulfill our obligations, and I’m not just talking about moral obligations, I’m talking about legal obligations. Promises that were made that we seem conveniently to have forgotten. Now I believe that when the history of this time comes to be written, we will feel ashamed of how few refugees we let into this country and how badly we treated them when they were here.
Reporter: Thank you, David, that’s great.
The Witness: The only witness to the shooting is Linh Xuan Huy (Kae Alexander), an illegal immigrant who is found with drugs in her pockets. This is extremely awkward for her girlfriend Jane Oliver (Nicola Walker), a priest with the Church of England who refers to God as "her" and already has enough problems with her Bishop who, coincidentally, is also gay. When Jane chooses her parish over her girlfriend, it seems like we're supposed to think it's some horrible sign of the times that she had to choose, but I can't imagine the issues wouldn't be the same were the clergy in question heterosexual.
The Killer: Now, as to who pulled the trigger - that honor goes to Army Captain Sandrine Shaw (Jeany Spark). Shaw's father and brother were both killed in action and, since returning from action herself, she has returned to a position where she is freely sexually harassed and even quietly raped by a superior officer. But women have to "put up with it," she tells a female coworker, "because this is the army."
As it turns out, a high-ranking government official lied to her and told her that Asif was a terrorist, thinking that it might make her feel better to have somebody to kill. Upon finding out that he was not, in fact, a terrorist, just a guy who found out some information he shouldn't have (the names of those smuggling in illegal immigrants), Shaw killed herself.
With that, left-wing bases were all pretty much covered, and the show came to a close. What a disappointment.
