Should You Honour The Honourable Woman With Your Viewership?

What Is This Thing?

Having inherited an extremely profitable arms business from their Israeli father (who was assassinated in front of them in a banquet hall in his adopted home of London), Nessa and Ephra Stein have made it their life's project to promote peace in the Middle East by funding philanthropic projects in Palestine. TURNS OUT THAT'S KIND OF COMPLICATED.

When Is It On?

Thursdays at 10 PM on SundanceTV.

Why Was It Made Now?

Um. Actually, the miniseries was filmed in 2013, but I gather that its producers were -- sadly -- pretty sure this would still be a relevant subject a year later. They just may not have anticipated that active, intense conflicts would be playing out in the middle of their American press tour, which has made for some very careful talk show interviews from its lead, speaking of whom....

What's Its Pedigree?

Oscar nominee Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Nessa, the titular Woman, and she's surrounded by fancy British actors you've seen lots of: Eve Best (Nurse Jackie), Tobias Menzies (Rome), Genevieve O'Reilly (Episodes), Katherine Parkinson (The I.T. Crowd), Lindsay Duncan (everything, but most recently Sherlock), and Stephen Rea (everything, but most recently Utopia), with Janet Tumbleweeds McTeer promised in future episodes. The series was created and written by Hugo Blick, who's been responsible for a bunch of British series I am not familiar with (other than Sensitive Skin, and that's only because I just saw promos for its Canadian remake, starring Kim Cattrall, when I was at my sister's the past two weeks).

...And?

I guess here's where I should say I stan pretty hard for Maggie Gyllenhaal; the reason I will watch Mona Lisa Smile whenever it comes on TV is to see her in period clothes, and while I'm not ASMR-sensitive in general, the exception might be her voice -- particularly when she's speaking in an English accent. So The Honourable Woman would probably be my jam no matter what it was about.

Fortunately, there's some real meat here -- though, again, it might be more relevant to my specific interests than it is to yours. The knotty question of how to address and possibly remediate the root causes of terrorism in the region is one we all grapple with, obviously -- particularly for the past few weeks -- but it's been part of my life for the last six years or so, since my parents both took jobs in Karachi, Pakistan, at the Aga Khan University, an institution with a strong philanthropic mission: to train new generations of professionals (particularly in the medical and nursing fields) who will stay in the country and help promote educational and economic development. So in the series premiere, when Nessa states that the reason she and her brother have made Palestinian development the object of their company's philanthropic foundation is to safeguard Israel -- "Terror thrives in poverty. It dies in wealth" -- she's definitely got my attention! She's about to announce the recipient of the contract for Phase 3 of a project to lay phone and broadband cable in the West Bank, and a longtime (Israeli) friend of the family is pretty sure he's got it. Has he? What if he hasn't? And how effective is this project going to be in promoting peace and development in the long term? Is this a problem that can be solved by throwing money at it? (Spoiler: looks like no!)

Meanwhile, this announcement is happening on the day Nessa's just had her investiture as a Baroness. How is that going to change how she does business? What scrutiny will her new status bring to her work? And what about this MI6 lady who's sniffing around and who apparently had an affair with Ephra? (Actually, scratch that last one: by the end of the premiere, Ephra's got WAY bigger problems than any past sexual indiscretion.)

...But?

I paused the premiere about fifteen minutes in thinking that my esteemed colleague Dave might be interested in it too, based on his enjoyment of political-themed British series like Secret State and State Of Play, but apparently if they don't have "State" in the title he doesn't care. So if you are of a similar disposition, this might be too slow and/or self-consciously symbolic for you.

...So?

The series premiere ends with a pretty intriguing cliffhanger, but even if it hadn't, I'm all the way on board and dying to find out exactly how ironic the series title is.