For years, major governments around the world have routinely conducted wargames and simulation exercises to test their military readiness, crisis response, and supply chain resilience. For the first time ever, we’re about to see how one plays out.

Based on its hit 2025 podcast of the same name, Sky TV has developed four-part docuseries The Wargame, which explores how a fictitious UK cabinet — made up of former MPs from multiple parties — could responded to completely made-up threats and eventual attack from Russia.

Here’s how it works. Our cabinet (listed below) will face an escalating simulated crisis, beginning with the suspicious murders of two RAF soldiers. While the Russian side, and any international players, are being given instructions by producers, every decision we see from the UK side is being made in the moment.

With four episodes dropping nightly on both Sky and NOW from September 21, I won’t sugar coat it: The Wargame is an absolutely terrifying watch. If you’ve ever seen anything like Threads, When the Wind Blows or the BBC 1966 film The Wargame, it’s the same sense of impending dread… just from the other side of the table.

But, don’t get me wrong — this might just be the most important piece of television of the 21st century. As the UK’s War Book is being redrafted in real time to advise the public on how best to be prepared, consider that Sky TV is granting us an important head start

We can no longer bury our heads in the sand over just how unprepared the UK is, and artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the main reasons we’ll be able to realize this.

The Wargame is the most important TV show you’ll stream in your lifetime — just be prepared

Before we drill deeper into what you’ll soon see, here’s our full list of players and their assigned roles:

• ● Prime Minister: The Rt Hon. the Lord Gove PC
• ● Deputy Prime Minister: The Rt Hon. Nicola Sturgeon PC
• ● Defence Secretary: The Rt Hon. Dame Penny Mordaunt DBE PC
• ● Home Secretary: The Rt Hon. the Baroness Harman KC PC
• ● Foreign Secretary: The Rt Hon. Jim Murphy PC
• ● Attorney General: The Rt Hon. the Baroness Warsi PC
• ● Director of Communications: The Baroness Hazarika MBE
• ● Chief of Defence Staff: General Sir Richard Barrons KCB CBE
• ● National Security Adviser: The Rt Hon. the Lord Kim Darroch KCMG
• ● Intelligence Chief: Christopher Steele
• ● Nato Secretary General: The Rt Hon. the Lord Robertson KT GCMG PC
• ● US Secretary of State: Anthony Scaramucci

As you can see in the above trailer, Sky has been incredibly upfront about its use of generative AI visual effects to create scenes showcasing Russian missiles hitting numerous UK targets. This is normally the part where I’d do my “AI is unnecessary in the creative arts, why couldn’t they have just used CGI instead?” tirade, but actually, I’m glad that this decision was made.

Why? Not only is there a poetic irony of using AI to depict missile attacks mere weeks after the global public was told that there’s a 10% that AI could kill us all within the next decade, but its use feeds into a wider point that The Wargame is trying to make. We’ve become so used to a certain type of ‘peacetime life’ and concerned ourselves with other issues (such as AI) that we’ve lost any kind of resilience we’ve ever had since World War II.

While the exact military capabilities of the UK are made up, seeing just how weak and unprepared we are if direct conflict was to strike our shores will hopefully be a wake-up call to anyone watching. As Sturgeon tells us, these choices are often like picking between “bad and worse,” and it’s nice to see our politicians slightly more humanized, even if the docuseries doesn’t fill me confidence as to how international conflict could be handled.

With a fake COBR-style boardroom, military ops room, and press room all in use, it does feel as though this is the closest we’ll ever get to an all-politician version of Big Brother. But, fake TikTok clips from real-life influencers capturing their reactions to the fictional breaking news brings the effects straight back home.

What do our players hope we take away from watching? “Governments have to, of course, hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. And that’s not just about defence spending,” Sturgeon said at the show’s launch event. “There’s a whole debate about preparedness of the population and some really basic things that we’re just not at the races of, in terms of being prepared for even a fraction of this unfolding.

“So, getting rid of the optimism bias that this won’t happen, to starting to think seriously about the prospect of this possibly happening.” Deep breaths, people.