The Trojan Horse

3 hour miniseries satire from Canada. There is a previous installment called H2O, but that's not available anywhere here that I could find.

Canadian citizens have voted to become part of the United States (this is what happened in the previous installment), dismaying politicians on that side of the fence, who feel they've lost control. Tom McLaughlin (Paul Gross), a previous Prime Minister, has designs to take over the U.S., by running for the Presidency himself, now that he is a U.S. citizen. (Who knew the Canadians were so cutthroat!)

Tom Skerritt is the sitting President, with Saul Rubinek as a top aide who is willing to go beyond the law. Greta Scacchi is a savvy investigative British reporter Helen Madigan who eventually digs up what's going on.


McLaughlin plans to remarry his ex wife, a Texas oil heiress who is also a Senator (Gross' real life wife and Canadian Martha Burns) and run for the presidency with her as his VP (she is also a pawn in all this). When he was Prime Minister, the U.S. had asked him for aid for their dwindling water supply, so he feels he has a good image in the U.S. In secret meetings he collects a team which includes an assassin (Stephen McHattie). The plan involves a fake assassination attempt to gain McLaughlin even more popular support.

There is also another assassin that Helen befriends (Clark Johnson), and they dig up something regarding digital voting machine fraud.

This (and more) was all in the first hour so it might have helped to have the first miniseries to watch so that I knew the characters going in (the title of which I assume also had to do with the water issue mentioned in this series).

In the second hour McLaughlin's plan starts coming together and Helen starts finding out more, but not quickly enough that I thought they could wrap things up in hour three.

I liked how the Canadians were played by Canadian actors (even some American characters were played by Canadian actors), and that almost all the major characters were 50 years old or older, a rarity!

Not quite as suspenseful and tight as the BBC's State of Play, but the ideas and acting are good, even if the premise may be over the top/outlandish/convoluted. It certainly paints Canada in a light I am not used to seeing them in.

I also like the beginning title sequence, spinning coins with mottoes describing the three countries (Canada, U.S., Great Britain, truth, justice, integrity, etc.) turn into one with a horse that says "treachery, deceipt, corruption." Simple and to the point.