The Honourable Woman

Throughout the eight episodes of The Honourable Woman the viewer is treated to a relevant, gutsy, challenging television experience. If you ever dismissed or plead ignorance over the Arab - Israeli conflict, you now have an emotional stake in the conflict. The characters are complex, the actors are skilled artisans. Ever since Maggie Gyllenhaal was slinking around in Secretary she has established a reputation for conquering the challenging, controversial roles. Maggie has conquered once again. The Honourable Woman will win a lot of trophies once the awards season has arrived. Amongst the superior cast is one actor who may have placed an exclamation point on his heretofore fine body of work. The trophy engravers should get a jump on etching Stephen Rea's name on the hardware from the Golden Globe, BAFTA, Emmy and Blockbuster(sic)awards. Rea simply owned every scene in which he appeared. His star rose with the release of the feisty film, The Crying Game whose plot twist remains one of the great and respected spoilers that is kept mum to this day. His efforts were rewarded with an Oscar nomination to go along with his Tony nomination. Twenty plus years later, it is time for this native and resident of Northern Ireland to get his due. Will The Honourable Woman return for another season? Hugo Blick and company drained every ounce out of the script and characters. Perhaps the dawn should best be left unsaid.

Stunning, beautifully made 8 hour mini-series that attempts to humanize a situation as impossibly knotty as the middle east, and against all odds, succeeds. The biggest triumph here is by writer/director/producer Hugo Blick, who creates an amazingly dense and cinematic landscape of characters and tragedies.

Nessa Stein (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is a tremendously wealthy Israeli determined to use her wealth and influence to try and bring together Israelis and Palestinians. Her father – assassinated before her eyes as a child – was an arms merchant amassing a huge fortune, but at a human cost Nessa finds hard to live with. Now, as an adult, along with her brother, she plans to bring the high-speed internet to the Palestinian areas of Israel to help jump start their economy and self-sufficiency.

But, understandably this plan raises hackles and suspicions on both sides and before you know it Nessa's brother's Palestinian housekeeper (and Nessa's friend) has her son kidnapped. Thus begins a complicated, tense, tremendously intelligent and demanding trip down a rabbit hole of lies, secrets, hidden histories, violence, spies and counter-spies and the sadness of watching your ideals hacked to pieces by all those around you.

The series deserves credit for many things, among which is managing not to take sides, but to examine the madness on all sides of living in perpetual war.

The acting is tremendous. Maggie Gyllenhaal cements her position as one of our finest and most versatile actresses. Her Nessa is an admirable if deeply flawed woman. Gyllenhaal deftly melds all the character's sides; absurdly smart, brave, afraid, powerful, hidden, foolish, naive -- into a great tragic heroine. Stephen Rea is endlessly fascinating as a very smart UK spy attempting to uncover the many hidden truths. Quiet yet immensely powerful, watching Rea's Sir Hayden-Hoyle interrogate and manipulate those he interviews is a master class in loaded understatement in performance.

But the whole cast is absolutely first rate; the brilliant and under-appreciated Janet McTeer as Rea's boss, Andrew Buchan as Nessa's brother, Lubna Azbal as the mother of the kidnapped boy, etc.

Just as wonderful is the cinematography, editing and music, combing to create a show that feels stylistically far more like a top flight auteur film than TV. This is challenging, complicated stuff. You will inevitably get lost at times. But have faith Blick and crew will bring you back around if you pay attention. And you'll want to. I greedily watched the 8 hours in 2 days.

This also lead me to watch Blick's previous BBC mini-series "The Shadow Line" -- a tale of police corruption and drug dealing that's almost a complicated and great as "Honorable Woman". If you responded strongly to this, you should check out that earlier work as well.

Firstly let me say that " The Honourable Woman" is fiction, just as say a film like " A Few Good Men" was. Once you view it like this and NOT as it some reflection what is going on in Gaza and Israel right now. I am a Zionist but I watched this masterpiece and was able to have empathy with not only the Israeli characters but with the Palestinians also. The cast is magnificent and I expect that it will win all the major awards at the BAFTAS. I am not sure how our American cousins will take it, because you will have never had seen anything like it. I reiterate we see a tour de force of acting, with several major parts for the girls. However if I were to pick out for me who is numero uno it would be Stephen Rea as a John Le Carre, George Smiley kind of intelligence officer Hugh Hayden-Hoyle. Maggie Gyllenhaal with a perfect English accent plays the major part of Nessa Stein a newly ennobled Anglo-Israeli businesswoman. BUT is she the Honourable Woman? I will let you decide when you see it!

Set in the middle of one of our era's most tragic and polarizing conflicts, it is perhaps understandable that reviewers here jump to the conclusion that it's propaganda for one side or the other. But it isn't. Using a family's internal struggle with the background being the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the writers almost can't win. But the preposterous claim that the series is justification for the current conflict when the shooting schedule began in July 2013...to say nothing of script writing, finding producers, and casting which would reach back into 2012 if not longer, demonstrates how explosive the setting is. As Nessa says, "It's the Middle East. Enemies is what you make." Therefore, it was brave of the project to chose that setting, but it shouldn't be seen as taking a stand for one side or the other.

The pace may be slow, but it's dreamlike point of view, for me, made it all the more transfixing. The cast, particularly Gyllenhaal's performance, is splendid, and the trap of being a mediator, whether is World politics or family dynamics demonstrates that hazard. ("You're either for me or against me.") This may be a series to watch all in one sitting, void of weekly waits and commercials. For me, it's the years best television series.

Other reviewers have commented - often derogatorily - on the slowness of Hugo Blick's production. However this is a deliberate technique that not only builds up tension - nothing is quite what it seems in the Steins' world - but also indicates the complexity of the issues tackled in this series. While Nessa Stein (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and her brother Ephra (Andrew Buchan) appear philanthropic on the surface, using their wealth to foster better relationships between the Israelis and the Palestinians - they are also involved in underhand schemes, none of which are overtly revealed in the opening episodes. Instead director Blick uses a montage technique comprised of short scenes which might appear meaningless in themselves, but which cumulatively build up a picture of the Stein family's way of life in the present as well as the past. It is the viewers' responsibility to put these pieces of information together and try and work out what is going on. This task is often difficult, as Blick brings in characters who superficially seem to have nothing to do with the main plot-lines. It is only later on - in subsequent episodes - that we discover what their role in the overall story actually is. This technique draws attention to the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where it is often very difficult to identify who one's allies or one's enemies actually are. People have to be taken at face value, until one gets to know them. THE HONOURABLE WOMAN takes a bit of time to get going, but by the fourth episode it has gained in momentum, not only explaining the Stein family's shady past, but showing how the British security forces, led by Julia Walsh (Janet McTeer) and Hugo Hayden-Hoyle (Stephen Rea) have to get their hands morally dirty in order to make sense of what they are doing. There are no heroes or villains in this world; the most successful people are those who know how to play the system by forging and re-forging alliances, as well as exploiting others for personal gain. Viewers need to be a little patient with this series; if they do so, they will be amply rewarded.