If ever the occasion calls for a culling of good cheer, a series currently available on streaming services is perfect for the job.
The Undeclared War has all sorts of brain-melting misery and (so far at least – most of the second series remains to be watched) feels like a rough, hairy blanket of suffocating hopelessness.
It has crippling cyberattacks, destabilising disinformation wars, culture wars, race wars and possibly all-out wars as world powers thrust and threaten, apparently generally hell-bent on destroying each other. It has unprincipled journalists, ignorant politicians, heavy-handed policing, overbearing bosses, disaffected workers, lost loves and angsty heroes.
It even has Simon Pegg in a rare non-comedic role when what the world really needs now is for him to burst through the door with a wisecracking alien.
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But in all its unrelenting drabness (it has the hue of something filmed inside a lift shaft), a tiny splash of glorious colour emerges.
It is the little green strip on the registration plate of the car Pegg drives – the little green strip that means the car is electric.
There was no remark made on this. There was no camera close-up or lingering shot. The soundtrack did not suddenly sway into a hippie haze of The Byrds or Cat Stevens.
It was just a small detail in a small scene that was remarkable in its unremarkableness.
Think about it – when was the last time a protagonist in a modern drama series sped off in an EV or a chase took place through a wind farm?
When did romance between characters ever spark over an EV charging point at the back of Tesco?
When has a key piece of plot been revealed by an interjection into a water cooler conversation where colleagues are comparing the performance of their solar panels via apps on their phones?
Never is the answer, because the adoption of clean technologies has yet to feature, never mind become normalised, in popular entertainment.
Against this background, Olivia Rodrigo is a veritable climate action hero.
It’s because of the song Drop Dead – the first release from her big summer album in which she managed not only to produce a track that is the Teenage Kicks of 2026, but did so while referencing sustainable transport.
“Ever taken that Eurostar to France?” she asks in an imaginary interrogation of the object of her desire while sliding across the floor of the Gallery of Great Battles in the Palace of Versailles in her stocking feet.
Okay, so the Eurostar is a little more rock star than the average suburban commuter line.
But still, there is something heartening about the idea that a small percentage of Rodrigo’s legions of fans might hear the lyric about a train, that goes underwater, that connects countries and they might say in wonder: “Wait, you can do that?”
And then they would realise for the first time in their short carbon-intensive lives that there are alternatives to runways and highways for getting around.
This is not to be delusional about the climate footprint of a pop star who undoubtedly used both runways and highways to get to Versailles, the former pad of Louis XIV, where she filmed the video for the song.
But contrast her high-spirited trainspotting to other references in popular culture where trains are invariably the scene of gruesome murders, unexplained disappearances and unlikely rooftop wrestling.
One episode of Sex and the City probably did more damage to the reputation of the long-distance train than a decade of delayed departures, bad coffee and blocked toilets.
Samantha and Carrie make the mountainous sacrifice of taking the train instead of flying and the journey is depicted as one of cramped discomfort shared with “ugly” people, a stereotyped disapproving Amish couple and blue-collar males who have the audacity to reject Samantha’s seduction efforts.
Had the writers been the slightest bit climate-conscious and granted the prissy pair the tiniest sliver of excitement and romance on their expedition, it is possible every train out of Grand Central would have been booked out for months afterwards.
Attending the AIB Sustainability Conference last November, actor Benedict Cumberbatch issued a plea for the TV and film industry to write climate action into scripts in a non-intrusive, barely perceptible way.
His point was that the reach of the big and small screen is such that, by making something normal, you make it powerful.
[ Benedict Cumberbatch tells Irish audience that actors must lead climate activismOpens in new window ]
You don’t have to declare war on fossil fuels in every scene – just have a character use a bag for life or keep cup instead of a fossil fuel-derived plastic alternative.
And in that quiet undeclared war, climate action might just emerge the winner.
