Season 1 • Episode 4
LatestSial IV is a Swiss television miniseries by Greek filmmaker and writer Adonis Kyrou, adapted from the speculative fiction novel Deadly Image (AKA The Uncertain Midnight) by British author Edmund Cooper. It tells the story of Denis Lange (Henri Gilabert), a fallout shelter engineer who is accidentally trapped in suspended animation as war breaks out in 1970, only to awaken in the early 2100s in Sial IV, an underground city in which humankind lives a life of leisure, having discharged all responsibility to androids. Assigned the android Diana as his personal assistant, Denis ventures through this unsettling idyll, eventually finding a small but tenacious group of resistors who seek to uncover the truth about the compound and its ruler, the mysterious Machiavelli.
Direction
Kyrou's Greek-poet eye brings uncanny beauty to sterile underground spaces.
Writing
Cooper's novel translates to sharp dialogue about freedom vs. comfort.
Production
1969 Swiss TV budget somehow looks intentionally, brilliantly artificial.
Creator
Adonis Kyrou
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Edmund Cooper was a bitter optimist—his 1950s novels predicted automation anxiety while other sci-fi dreamed of jetpacks. This adaptation caught Europe's 1968 hangover mood perfectly.
Marcel Dalio (Machiavelli) fled France in 1940; his real exile arguably informs the performance of a man who built his own perfect prison.
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