The Communists

The Revolution Should Have Been Televised

Manfield, South Yorkshire, 1984. Out-of-work steelworker-turned- radical revolutionary Joe Starkhill and his band of comrades seize the Town Hall and take the Mayor, her driver, a security guard and a civil servant hostage - declaring the start of a socialist revolution in Britain. But when a faulty phone line prevents them from alerting the local newspaper and TV station, and the police write them off as a hoax, Starkhill and his revolutionaries find themselves trapped inside the Town Hall unable to broadcast their revolutionary manifesto and mobilise the masses. It is only when one of the hostages fails to return home for dinner, that the alarm is raised and Inspector John Machin [Paul Fox, THE SELFISH GIANT] is dispatched to the Town Hall to investigate. A modest cop with an untold past, Machin wants to keep the siege a private matter - but it's not long before the building is surrounded by the press, police and public, turning Starkhill and the Revolutionaries into a media sensation. With no Mayor, no supporting media and no direct phone line to the Revolutionaries, Inspector Machin must infiltrate the Town Hall and negotiate the hostages' release - only to find the hostages have already taken up Starkhill's revolution...