To quote extensively from Wikipedia (#hooray for Wikipedia, it renders obsolete all dead-tree media#)
"The series is set in a dystopian future in which Britain is under the grip of the Home Office's Department of Public Control (PCD), a tyrannically oppressive bureaucracy riding roughshod over the population's civil liberties. Edward Woodward plays Jim Kyle, a journalist on the last independent newspaper called The Star, who turns renegade and begins to fight the PCD covertly. The officials of the PCD, in turn, try to provide proof of Kyle's subversive activities."
Another relevant scene setting quote:
"This state of affairs was precipitated by a critical financial collapse (possibly an irrecoverable national bankruptcy) in the early 1980s, triggering a de facto state of emergency, cancelling the General Election and causing the economy (and imports) to drastically contract forcing stringent rationing of housing, goods and services."
I think we know a suitable campaigning journalist:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/3532349/Boris-Johnson-expresses-trenchant-concerns-over-Damian-Green-arrest.html
Stars Freema Agyeman As Boris Johnson.
