Not, alas, a sequel to 5 Days.

Why did I watch it?

I heard Nick Briggs (voice of the daleks) recommend this account of the Iranian Embassy siege of 1980 – he mentioned the surprising casting of Australian rapper Abbie Cornish as Katie Adie. I was reminded of this intriguing fact when I saw Cornish (aka MC Dusk) in Three Billboards.

Did it meet expectations?

There’s a great cast led by Mark Strong, and the late Tim Piggott-Smith (in what must have been one of his last roles) is reliably wonderful as every-Prime-Minister-needs-a-Willie Whitelaw. The dialogue they’re given is more serviceable than sparkling – particularly noticeable as the journalists lack any real repartee and their lines just hit the speakers with a dull thunk. But it’s well paced and that serves to build up a sense of purposeful atmosphere. The action follows Strong’s negotiator, plus Whitelaw’s war room, Jamie (“Billie Elliot”) Bell’s SAS team, and Kate Adie on the media front line, covering, as the title suggests, the 6 days of the siege and nothing more. There’s very little depth to it, which is fine for what it is, although some exploration of how Adie made her choices would have been welcome. It’s a straight-to-Netflix release, which for some reason (to do with some sort of “Cloverfield”?) seems to be all the rage at the moment, but on the strength of this it seems to be nothing more than the new straight-to-video.

You should watch it if…

• You enjoy re-enactments of embassy sieges

You shouldn’t watch it if…

• You’re after any deeper exploration of the context or the characters

Next up: Jackie Brown (1997)