The Rapture and Criminal Record Mirror Real Crises
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- BBC's 'The Rapture' is an apocalypse drama set during a UK heatwave, developed years before the recent heatwaves, with its release coinciding with the highest-ever recorded June temperature in the UK and a third heatwave by late July.
- The Daily Mail critic complained the show portrayed Christianity as 'a bastion of anti-science nutjobs and fundamentalists,' asking rhetorically whether the BBC would ever make a similar drama about a Muslim imam.
- Apple TV's 'Criminal Record' season two opens with a deadly far-right attack at a Ministry of Defence protest, conceived by writer Paul Rutman before the Southport-attack riots, asylum-seeker hotel arsons, and Elon Musk's comments on civil war in the UK became regular news.
- Peter Capaldi stars in 'Criminal Record,' which the columnist says he lifts 'so far above procedural you forget the police even have procedures.'
- 'The Rapture' was adapted from Liz Jensen's 2009 novel of the same name, while Eleanor Catton's 'Birnam Wood' and Naomi Alderman's 'The Future' — both 2023 — independently imagined what the author calls the billionaire death wish and post-humanist outlook.
- The author interviewed lead actor Ruth Madeley in June and found even door handles and street furniture too hot to touch during the heatwave, calling the show's timing 'more apposite' than she had imagined.
- The columnist argues the only people denying the obvious future — extreme weather, billionaire prep culture for mass death events, and politically funded division — are politicians still squabbling over North Sea crude oil and net-zero costs.
Why it matters: The column argues that elected officials are uniquely out of step: while novelists in 2023 imagined billionaire survivalism and TV writers staged far-right violence before the Southport riots, politicians still argue about North Sea crude and net-zero costs during a third heatwave.
