The Undeclared War continues with its second installment on Channel 4 today – and RadioTimes.com can exclusively reveal a clip from the new episode.
The short preview shows an interaction between veteran GCHQ employee John Yeabsley (Mark Rylance) and genius 21-year-old hacker Saara Parvin (Hannah Khalique-Brown) as the latter attempts to track down a mathematician.
The clip begins with Saara sitting across from the rather pedantic John in the GCHQ canteen and asking him why he’s constantly correcting people’s grammar.
“If we wrote code as sloppily as we write English, it would never run,” is his response. “Some things have to be right.”
He then asks why she’s only eating an apple for her lunch, to which she informs him that she’s Muslim and they don’t have any Halal options – before she asks him for help in finding a “mathematician friend”.
“He isn’t here,” she says. “Can you tell me where they work, the mathematicians? I’m new here.”
“I’ll show you if you like, but I warn you they won’t be very welcoming,” he answers, before asking why she’s laughing at his response.
“They won’t be very welcoming? No different to any other department here then,” she says, but this only prompts him to return to his grammar pedantry.
“No different from any other department. It’s different from, compared with,” he says. You can watch the clip in full below:
A full synopsis of the episode – which is already available to view along with the rest of the season as a boxset on All 4 – reads: “Saara is put to work combing through the text in the virus, looking for passwords.
“It’s a monotonous job, likely to take days, but after many hours scrolling through, Saara finds a suspicious line of encrypted text within the code. Her colleagues think it’s unimportant, but Saara isn’t convinced.
“She also gets more familiar with the players at GCHQ and makes some unlikely friends. With their help, Saara unravels a dubious invitation to rendezvous – but is she closer to the truth or just willingly entering a carefully baited trap?”
The Undeclared War continues at 9pm on 7th July 2022 on Channel 4 and the full season is available as a boxset on All4. Looking for something else to watch? Check out our TV Guide or visit our dedicated Drama hub for the latest news.
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