One of the best British television series of 2011 -- and IMO of all time -- was "The Shadow Line," written and directed by Hugo Blick. In seven short episodes, it portrayed the murder of a crime boss that is being investigated by both sides -- the police, and the criminals. What made it so great was the combination of tremendous writing and even more phenomenal acting, featuring such paragons of the English theater and screen as Chiwetel Ejiofor, Christopher Eccleston, Stephen Rea, Rafe Spall, and Eve Best. It earned a Best Director award from BAFTA (the British Emmys) and a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Stephen Rea, who had never been better.
Now Hugo Blick is back with another incredibly well-written and well-cast series called "The Honourable Woman." It just started its run on BBC Two last night, and will show in the US on the Sundance Channel starting July 31. The writing is, if anything, even better and more tense, drawing viewers into a tale of Israeli-Palestinian-English intrigue from the first moment and not letting up (at least in the first episode) until the last. And the cast -- almost unbelievably -- may be even better. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Nessa Stein, daughter of an Israeli arms merchant who was assassinated in front of her 29 years ago who has transformed his former weapons empire into a company creating cable networks to connect Israel and the West Bank to the rest of the world, and other philanthropic acts. Stephen Rea plays Hugh Hayden-Hoyle, a career MI6 spy, who is about to be forcibly retired and who is working his last case before being put out to pasture. It does not appear to be as great a role for Rea as Gatehouse, his character in "The Shadow Line," but then I can't think of very many roles that *are* of that caliber, other than, say, Keyser Soze in "The Usual Suspects." Still, he eats the screen every time he appears on it, and looks as if he's going to add "master spy" to his lifetime list of great characterizations in this series. Other notables include Janet McTeer as the head of MI6, Eve Best again as an MI6 agent, Andrew Buchan as Nessa's brother, and Lubna Aszabal as Nessa's best friend and nanny to Ephra's kids Atika. The first episode starts with Nessa being sworn in as a new member of the House Of Lords, and quickly segues to murder, extortion, kidnapping, and levels of international intrigue that would do justice to John Le Carré or Len Deighton. I'm reviewing it after only one episode because it's already clear that as a viewer I'm in the hands of a master dramatist, and that it's going to be another winner. Don't miss it, if it becomes available where you live.
