LOS ANGELES —
Maggie Gyllenhaal, the Oscar-nominated actress best known for “The Dark Knight” and “Donnie Darko,” has just turned in some of her best work, and it’s for the small screen.
In “An Honorable Woman,” premiering July 31 on Sundance TV, the American Gyllenhaal plays Nessa Stein, a British peer born in Israel to a Zionist arms procurer.
As a girl, Nessa witnessed her father’s assassination. Now, a member of the House of Lords, she heads her father’s company, which she has committed to pursuing peace in the Middle East — or at least to building a fiber-optics empire in Israel and the West Bank.
The tense spy thriller, Gyllenhaal’s first for TV, is dense, complex and riveting, an ever-twisting mystery in which no one can be trusted. Following the storyline through the eight-hour miniseries is a challenge but an ultimately rewarding one.
Current events in the Middle East only heighten the tension and underscore the ongoing standoff.
“When I wrote the piece 18 months ago it was a quiet time,” writer-director Hugo Blick said. “It is cyclical. It has now tragically become this hot spot yet again. No one could have predicted. It still remains an intractable problem.”
The miniseries doesn’t take sides or posit a solution, except to argue that the Middle East dilemma is more complicated than you might think.
The viewer’s perceptions and sympathies shift throughout the hours. Ultimately, the narrative is about secrets, deceptions and the overall lack of trust.
“Secrets are weird. Either you own them or they own you,” the terrific Steven Rea says in his role as Hugh Hayden-Hoyle, the outgoing head of the MI5 Middle East desk. His character’s one remaining assignment is to figure out who is trying to destroy the Stein family, domestically and on the world stage, and why.
And Janet McTeer is sensational as Dame Julia Walsh, the head of the British spy agency and the toughest-talking bureaucrat in the business.
Sarah Barnett, head of Sundance TV, noted, “The volume of scripted TV shows has mushroomed over the past few years.
“Given our roots in independent film, at Sundance we find our place on this busy landscape with what we call auteur- driven television. That’s a singular vision often characterized by a desire to say something a little different and maybe to go a little deeper.”
“An Honorable Woman” is an example of cinematic television with a distinct point of view and sense of what the Brits call “authorship.” There won’t be a second season, Blick said, and the ending is quite sufficient.
Blick explained that his starting point for the project was his interest in “the vacuum that may exist in a personality,” like a woman who needs to take the world stage because she is disoriented about herself.
He calls his piece a “thriller mosaic,” putting the viewer in the role of putting the story together.
For the audience, that means more work than the average procedural, but a bigger payoff, too.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830, jostrow@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ostrowdp
