The BBC conspiracy thriller The Capture has returned for a third season, and its focus on shady digital practices has never looked more timely. Last month, the Guardian reported on a police arrest in Southampton where automated facial recognition software falsely identified a man as a burglar from Milton Keynes, despite the two men looking noticeably different. The algorithm could not be trusted, a scenario that fans of The Capture might recognise.
The drama, created by Ben Chanan, exists in a world bedevilled by opaque online systems and unreliable digital imagery. Season one introduced deepfake technology used to incriminate enemies of the state, while season two saw even scarier deepfakes deployed to falsify live TV interviews with a government minister. Now, in a post-correction era where citizens are aware that videos can be faked, the protagonist Rachel Carey, played by Holliday Grainger, leads the fight against such technology.
Season three begins with a new device known as a 'Carey cam' that foils a Russian black-ops agent at Heathrow. The agent uses a smartphone gizmo to make airport-security cameras see a face that is not his, but one of the cameras has two lenses, one not wired to the internet, which cannot be accessed remotely. The intruder is detected and repelled.
The Capture remains several steps ahead with its plotting, delivering twists too swift to be predictable and a wide ensemble of characters whose agendas are expertly marshalled. Chanan has written every episode himself and directed the first season, a seriously impressive feat for a lone human, if indeed he is merely a man and not an intimidatingly sophisticated bot.
