Classifiable as sci-fi due to being set twenty years in the future, this is nevertheless more a dark vision of a very plausible development of London based on the seeds that have already been sown. Constant surveillance by drones, an urban underclass being forced out of a prime real estate location, reliance on food banks and looting by the disenfranchised left with nothing but anger. The Kitchen in question, perhaps a reference to Hell's Kitchen in New York, a Manhattan working-class neighbourhood by now almost fully gentrified, but also containing the idea of being a melting pot where resentment is cooked up, is a huge council estate under siege from the forces of unfettered capitalism, with parallels to the Warsaw ghetto in 1944. Where the concept is somewhat skewed is its view that almost all of the people in the ghetto are not just of ethnic minorities but black, as if there were no Asian or Eastern European underclass. Still, that said, it's salutary to get a dystopia that isn't dependent on future tech, just a worst-case projection of how things could end up if society keeps going down the same track. Yes, it's deeply pessimistic and doesn't make much of an effort to create deep characterisation (ex-footballer Ian Wright's supporting role as the pirate radio voice of the complex, reminiscent of Samuel L. Jackson's DJ in Do the Right Thing, is about as rounded as it gets). But still chillingly compelling.
7/10
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