The Atlantic

<i>The State</i>: A Provocative New Drama Considers ISIS

The four-part miniseries by <em>Wolf Hall</em>’s Peter Kosminsky explores life inside the terrorist group for the Britons who join up.
Source: Channel 4 / National Geographic

When it premiered in the U.K. in August, Peter Kosminsky’s four-part miniseries capped a summer that had seen two of the worst terrorist events in recent British history: a bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester that killed 22 people and wounded 250, and an attack near London Bridge in which eight died and 48 were injured. Both acts were claimed by the Islamic State, the militant group in Iraq and Syria that an estimated 850 British nationals have left home to join. So Kosminsky, the writer and director behind the period piece and the factual drama , was wary about how viewers might receive , which dramatizes the experience of life inside ISIS for the new

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