I finally got to the end of this tortuous eight-part BBC series with my head spinning and my sympathies unengaged. An obviously highly topical storyline centring on the Israel/Palestine conflict, for me it was a dissatisfying mix of convoluted plotting, unsettling situations, periodic bursts of unsavoury actions, grisly killings and right-on politics, at one point having us believe that the US government under any circumstances would drop its support of Israel's right to exist in the United Nations.
I see Maggie Gylenhaal getting praised to the skies in the press for her part but I found her would-be martyrdom unconvincing. She doesn't even report her second rapist to the authorities, instead supposedly gratifying herself with telling the offender's wife instead. That's taking self sacrifice too far. Apart from delivering a spot-on English accent, she gets to run a lot, cry a lot, be silent a lot and undress a lot, especially to enter her sci-fi type special toilet, the purpose of which escaped me. None of the rest of the cast really convinced me in their roles either, none less so than Stephen Rea in a very mannered style of acting, playing the Smiley-esque spymaster always one step behind the action while at the same time pursuing his ex-wife like a lovesick teenager.
For some episodes I thought I was actually getting somewhere with the plot only to be thrown into confusion by the next one. I do get that Middle-east politics are at times impenetrably dense and complicated but with no liking or sympathy for Gylenhaal's Nessa Stein character or her elder brother, I have to say it took a lot of effort to watch it all the way through to the end.
Maybe it's just that I don't like or condone depictions of terrorism whether small or large-scale, or attempts to get inside the heads of ruthless political terrorists, but with no one figure commanding my attention never mind my sympathy, I was quite pleased just to make it to the end. Frankly, it just never felt real at any point and as the plot moved into ever-increasing circles failed to take me with it along the way.
I see Maggie Gylenhaal getting praised to the skies in the press for her part but I found her would-be martyrdom unconvincing. She doesn't even report her second rapist to the authorities, instead supposedly gratifying herself with telling the offender's wife instead. That's taking self sacrifice too far. Apart from delivering a spot-on English accent, she gets to run a lot, cry a lot, be silent a lot and undress a lot, especially to enter her sci-fi type special toilet, the purpose of which escaped me. None of the rest of the cast really convinced me in their roles either, none less so than Stephen Rea in a very mannered style of acting, playing the Smiley-esque spymaster always one step behind the action while at the same time pursuing his ex-wife like a lovesick teenager.
For some episodes I thought I was actually getting somewhere with the plot only to be thrown into confusion by the next one. I do get that Middle-east politics are at times impenetrably dense and complicated but with no liking or sympathy for Gylenhaal's Nessa Stein character or her elder brother, I have to say it took a lot of effort to watch it all the way through to the end.
Maybe it's just that I don't like or condone depictions of terrorism whether small or large-scale, or attempts to get inside the heads of ruthless political terrorists, but with no one figure commanding my attention never mind my sympathy, I was quite pleased just to make it to the end. Frankly, it just never felt real at any point and as the plot moved into ever-increasing circles failed to take me with it along the way.