The Honorable Woman, a new eight-episode mystery-thriller, is all about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Nessa Stein, a British-Israeli businesswoman who believes her company can help solve the conflict in Gaza by lifting the Palestinians out of poverty.
The series premiered this week on Sundance TV and given the eruption of violence in Gaza, the timing is eerily apt. “You have to step back and say, ‘Our [show] is just a fiction,’” explains the show’s creator, Hugo Blick. Still, he believes the series has some insight into the intractable conflict there. When Blick was in Hebron a year ago, it seemed as if the political problems were forgotten. Of course, they weren’t; it’s that cyclical violence he wants to explore in the series.
The Honorable Woman resists playing favorites — the characters are complicated, even contradictory in their allegiances and actions. And that’s pleased critics. “I think the commentators have recognized that the need on both sides to recognize the other side’s existence is the thing which drives the politics of this story,” Blick says.
Have you watched The Honorable Woman? What do you think so far? Leave us a comment below.
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