- Sky to adapt its political podcast from 2025 The war game as an ‘immersive’ new documentary series of the same name
- British politicians including Michael Gove, Nicola Sturgeon and Penny Mordaunt will form a mock government cabinet facing the threat of war from Russia
- Coming to Sky and NOW TV in September 2026
Sky has announced plans to adapt its political hit 2025 podcast The war game as an “immersive” documentary service coming to both the streamer and NOW TV in September 2026.
The premise will remain the same across four 60-minute episodes, which “take viewers beyond the news cycle and behind closed doors into a sealed COBR-style crisis room where real-world senior politicians, military leaders and intelligence chiefs are challenged to confront a high-stakes scenario: a Russian attack on British soil.”
The war game is set six months into the future and has been developed with leading academics, military and defense experts to replicate the pressures of policy-making at the highest level.
The following main cast of former British politicians will take on these (fictional) roles in the simulation:
- Prime Minister – Rt Hon. Lord Gove PC
- Deputy Prime Minister – The Rt Hon. Nicola Sturgeon PC
- Minister of Defense – Rt Hon. Lady Penny Mordaunt DBE PC
- Minister of the Interior – Rt Hon. Baroness Harman KC PC
- Minister of Foreign Affairs – Rt Hon. Jim Murphy PC
- Attorney General — Rt Hon. Baroness Warsi pc
- Director of Communications — Baroness Hazarika MBE
- Chief of the Defense Staff — General Sir Richard Barrons KCB CBE
- National Security Adviser — Rt Hon. Mr Kim Darroch KCMG
- Chief of Intelligence – Christopher Steele
No exact release date has been confirmed at the time of writing, but the original podcast gives us a solid idea of how we can expect the episodes to break down the “conflict.”
Opinion: A year on and The Wargame is still the most horrifying podcast I’ve ever listened to
Although the podcast ran for five episodes instead of four, we can expect the split of The war game to follow the same format.
Episode 1 sets the scene, with a series of seemingly unrelated attacks and problems across the UK potentially orchestrated by Russian intelligence. In Episode 2, Russia launches its first full-scale attack, with the Prime Minister addressing the nation at a time of unprecedented crisis in Episode 3.
Episode 4 is when Britain’s defenses start to fight back but are on the losing end. All of this culminates in a potential truce being brokered in episode 5, which, as you might expect, isn’t too straightforward.
If this premise sounds terrifying, that’s because it is. When the podcast first launched on Spotify, Apple and other services, I got everyone I knew to listen to it. Why? It addresses a reality that no one in actual government freely wants to admit: the British defense system is almost non-existent.
The war game concludes that Britain is susceptible to almost any kind of combat attack and will most likely be defeated (or at least left in a very worrying state). It encourages a greater sense of awareness among us all and will hopefully lead to some critical conversations.
If you’re wondering why a podcast would openly admit a country’s lack of protection to an international audience, The war game‘s slogan answers for us: “Russia knows our weaknesses, but do you?”
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