HBO’s new TV series, “The Brink” shows why you should be very afraid; that World War III is just a sneeze away. Considering that the people who run the affairs of the world are very human after all; they are not infallible, they are not unique, they are very ordinary humans with human weaknesses that can wreck havoc with our world and our lives.

Each episode is only 30 minutes and that is enough as you really need to surface for a breath of air; any longer than that and you many be brain dead.

I was either not paying attention to the run-up advertisements or there was no fanfare, and the series just crept up on me, with the first episode on HBO on 21-June-2015. I was just surfing the Astro channels looking for something interesting to record and saw this new series with its first episode later that night. I recorded it and viewed it later and boy! I was blown away.

The series is a dark comedy featuring a geopolitical crisis somewhere in the world and how the main characters react to it or caused it. The first season will focus on Pakistan. The main characters (at least in Episode 1) are a womanising, alcoholic Secretary of State, Walter Larson (Tim Robbins), a low-level Foreign Services officer based in the US Embassy in Pakistan, Alex Talbot (Jack Black) and Navy fighter pilot Zeke Tilson (Pablo Schreiber) who pops pills. Episode 1 ended with POTUS (President of the United States) ordering a pre-emptive strike on a Pakistani nuclear site and a Navy jet streaking in to bomb the site.  May God save us all!

Episode 2 has just aired. Catch the two episodes before it gets too far into the season.