Six Days

On April 30, 1980, six unknown men storm the Iranian Embassy in London and take twenty-six people inside hostage, most of them staff - Iranian nationals - with a handful of British. The six eventually identify themselves as Arab Iranians - Arabs a minority in a Persian dominated Iran - whose demand in this action is for the Iranian government to release ninety-one Arabs they are holding as political prisoners, the six who threaten to kill hostages if their demands are not met. The difficulty for the British authorities in dealing with this matter is the breakdown in diplomatic relations between Iran and not only Britain but most of the western world with the Ayatollah Khomeini deposing Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the ongoing hostage situation at the US Embassy in Tehran, and thus the British having no sway with the Iranians even in this matter affecting their own nationals, namely the hostages. In what ends up being the six day siege, this docudrama focuses on three different players on the British side, they representing three different organizations who may have a different agenda from each other. One is Max Vernon of the Metropolitan Police, he who becomes the main liaison between the British authorities as a collective and Salim, the lead hostage taker, and who is operating on a premise of negotiating in good faith. Two is Lance Corporal Rusty Firmin of the Special Air Services (SAS) of the British Army, the SAS which has set up in the adjacent building ready to storm the embassy at a moment's notice. Of the soldiers assigned, Rusty is seen as the one akin to a street fighter, with the tenacity to get the job done, his enthusiasm sometimes overshadowing what he is taught as tactical procedure. And three is BBC on-air reporter Kate Adie who is among the throng of reporters monitoring the action down the street on the other side of the proverbial yellow tape and who tries to get as much of an advantage over her fellow reporters as possible.