{"id":3631,"date":"2014-08-01T19:25:39","date_gmt":"2014-08-01T23:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3631"},"modified":"2015-01-03T06:10:52","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T11:10:52","slug":"the-honourable-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3631","title":{"rendered":"The Honourable Woman"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Maggie<\/a>

Maggie Gyllenhall in “The Honourable Woman” (photo: bbc.co.uk)<\/p><\/div>\n

Saw the first of eight episode of this new BBC production<\/a>\u2014\u201cboth mystery and spy thriller\u201d says Willa Paskin in Slate<\/em> (clip<\/a>)\u2014on the Sundance Channel last night (Thursdays, 10 pm). Reviews<\/a> have been smokin, and certainly the first hour:fifteen was exceptionally strong, laying down a lot of tantalizing clues about what\u2019s to come, with the backdrop \u201cthe incredible complexity, raw emotion, and intractability of the Israel-Palestine conflict,\u201d Paskin says.<\/p>\n

Maggie Gyllenhaal plays the head of a U.K.-based arms company and has recently been made a baroness, so is Lady Nessa Stein. She and her brother were orphaned young when their father, a major seller of arms to Israel, was assassinated in front of them. Now she runs the company, and her brother the company\u2019s foundation. They are determined use their money for good, so are in the midst of a project to bring communications technology\u2014cables for phone and internet access\u2014to the Palestinians, including, she says at one point, \u201cto the schools and hospitals we have built.\u201d<\/p>\n

The episode begins and ends with violence, including an early quick-cut of an event Viewer thinks might have been another violent act. In the middle, various people are trying to figure that one out, including Stephen Rea, as an over-the-hill MI6 agent assigned temporarily to the Middle East desk, as punishment it seems (I missed some muttered dialog, but I can read the script here<\/a>). He and Gyllenhaal independently elude their handlers for frank conversation with what I suspect is a short list of people they can trust.<\/p>\n

Lots of clues, lots of intrigue. Very promising. Says Paskin, \u201cThe Honorable Woman<\/em> is in many ways, most of them cerebral, an extremely impressive piece of work\u201d that \u201coversimplifies very little.\u201d Cerebral? Reason enough to watch.<\/p>\n

\"Converted_file_4913e22d\"<\/a>Do you think the publicists tried–perhaps unconsciously–to replicate National Geographic’s<\/em> most famous photo<\/a> in that picture of Maggie Gyllenhaal above? There’s something odd about the eyes there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saw the first of eight episode of this new BBC production\u2014\u201cboth mystery and spy thriller\u201d says Willa Paskin in Slate (clip)\u2014on the Sundance Channel last night (Thursdays, 10 pm). Reviews have been smokin, and certainly the first hour:fifteen was exceptionally … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Honourable Woman","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[193,56,67,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-espionage","category-film","category-television","category-the-morgue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-Wz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3631"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3632,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3631\/revisions\/3632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}