3 out of 5

Created by: Dan Futterman, Alex Gibney, and Lawrence Wright

covers season 1

This is amazingly acted, and well sequenced for handling a pretty massive topic – covering the build-up to 9/11, with focus on the information disconnect between the FBI and CIA, exposed in hearings in years following the incident and further covered in Lawrence Wright’s same-named book which served as the source material for the show – but, for better or worse, it struggles with TV-ness: with taking a non-fiction source and giving it leads and co-stars, and trying to divide it up into weekly chunks, and to give it a definitive beginning and end.  The latter is another sticking point, as we’re inevitably “building up” to a tragedy, when the book and show are more directly about the US political broken machine that may have supported that tragedy, so there’s a no-win setup in holding the 9/11 attacks until the show’s concluding episode: it’s required, because we are seeing the very real results of all the espionage game-playing from the previous episodes, but it’s also a known event (i.e. it’s not a “twist”), and not what the series is directly looking to memorialize or procedural-ize.  The way through this is the most effective approach – not avoiding showing the incident, but treating it as a background to how our principles – government officials and agents – were dealing with it, which further underlines the ridiculousness that perhaps allowed or even encouraged the fomenting pieces to be put into play.

Nonetheless: it’s hella hard adapting non-fiction into bite-sized fiction.

So we are anchored to rookie agent Ali Soufan (Tahar Rahim) as he becomes integral in the FBI’s investigations into al queda in Yemen, and as he learns the ropes of the double life from boss and FBI counter-terrorism chief  John O’Neill (Jeff Daniels); we marvel at the business of sussing out threats, and grit our teeth at the way O’Neill butts heads – indirectly – with Martin Schmidt (Peter Sarsgaard), chief of the CIA’s counter-terrorism department, and his underling, Wrenn Schmidt (Diane Marsh), as the two have drastically different feelings as to how best to halt anti-American actions.

This is all fine and good, but we’re also, as per TV, needed to want to follow these people around, and so we dig into their personal lives and relationships.  And while some of this is justifiable in terms of giving us background on the hows and whys of their personalities, a lot of it doesn’t end up enriching the foreground activities significantly, and just serves as humdrum filler while we’re waiting to get back to the more damningly fascinating parts of the story.  Which are also – again, television – stymied by downbeat chapter/episode breaks, because, whadya know, this isn’t really designed for hour long formatting.

Now, our writers and directors and actors all do wonderfully with this, as much as I feel is / was possible.  Flash-forwards to the post 9/11 hearings are used to punctuate less dramatic happenings in the relative past (that is, to make what we’re seeing more meaningful), and Tahar Rahim in particular is gripping to watch, representing the struggles of a co-cultured man (a Muslim Lebanese-American) at odds with what he feels about his own upbringing / religion and the way he sees it perverted for violence.  The production design brings the globe-trotting locales to life, and the offices we’re shuffled between feel appropriately bustling, or sloppy, or stiff-upper-lipped.  A-games are brought.  Alas, by needing to flesh this out to ten episodes and to “fictionalize” it, concessions were made which… prevented me from ever feeling like it was “must see TV.”  It’s something that, while it’s on, you know it’s good, and you’re interested, but maybe you hesitate to hit ‘play’ on the ol’ streaming remote, and it doesn’t make the top of your “you should be watching this” water cooler chat at work.