The Honourable Woman

Synopsis

Eight years after taking over the family company from her brother Ephra Stein, Anglo-Jewish businesswoman Nessa Stein is made a life peer for her continued commitment to the Middle East peace process. She becomes The Rt Hon. The Baroness Stein of Tilbury.

When her new business partner dies in a mysterious suicide, Lady Stein is forced to delay the third phase of an ambitious and long-planned project: connecting the West Bank with optical fibre cables. Various stakeholders manoeuvre for influence in connection with this venture.

The stakes become the highest possible for the family when Kasim, the son of Atika Halibi, a Palestinian translator/housekeeper and Nessa Stein's very close friend, is kidnapped. Soon, a mystery around his parentage comes to light, and further secrets are revealed.

Main cast

Hugo Blick re-uses several actors from his previous series The Shadow Line (e.g. Stephen Rea, Tobias Menzies and Eve Best).

Production

The eight-part series was announced in June 2013. It was commissioned by Ben Stephenson (Controller, BBC Drama Commissioning) and Janice Hadlow (Controller, BBC Two), and co-funded by the Sundance Channel. Written and directed by Hugo Blick, it was made by production companies Drama Republic and Eight Rooks, with Hugo Blick and Abi Bach as producers.

Stephenson describes the drama as "really grown up, complicated" and said he was keen to work with Blick again following the 2011 series The Shadow Line. The President of the Sundance Channel Sarah Barnett said that it is "a superbly wrought character piece about hope, compromise, guilt and families". Speaking about her casting, Gyllenhaal said: "I couldn't put the scripts down. Nessa is such an exciting and intricate character. I can't wait to begin filming."

Filming

The three-month filming schedule began in July 2013 in London and Romney Marsh in Kent, with further filming in the Middle East and the United States.

Critical response

The series was warmly received upon its initial debut in the UK, with The Guardian's Gabriel Tate summarising the series as "the most satisfying, densely plotted TV series for years."

The Honorable Woman (retitled to follow American spelling) premiered to universal acclaim in the United States, with strong reviews emerging out of publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York, Entertainment Weekly, Time and the Los Angeles Times, and received a Metacritic score of 82 out of 100 based on 24 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Particular raves came from Matt Roush of TV Guide, who described Blick's work as "written and directed with ruthless intelligence," and Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter, calling the miniseries "a spectacularly well-constructed story—intricate, dense, demanding and rewarding.

Specific notices focused on Gyllenhaal—Hank Stuever of The Washington Post described her performance as "remarkably measured and moving," while Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times said "Ms. Gyllenhaal is remarkable playing a principled but conflicted woman whose quicksilver personality alters from hour to hour and flashback to flash-forward" and on the series' mature treatment of gender roles. Sara Stewart of Indiewire credited The Honourable Woman with "upending the sexy spy drama," celebrating it for favouring the protagonist's intellect and interior complexity over romantic and sexual conflict. Sarah Chalmers of The Telegraph, meanwhile, said: "For here, at last, is a new kind of female protagonist: one not only driving the drama and outwitting the male characters, but looking amazing as she does so."

Responses in the UK to the series' conclusion were extremely positive. Julia Raeside of The Guardian wrote that it concluded as a "taut and perfectly controlled thriller ... something truly special." Nicholas Blincoe of The Telegraph, claimed that the series achieved the "must-watch" label of the summer.

The ending of The Honourable Woman was met with raves in the US; Willa Paskin of Slate praised the conclusion, explaining that "The Honorable Woman, unlike so many series that claim to do so, genuinely complicates notions of villainhood and herodom. It does not shortchange historical atrocity, pooh-pooh grievances, or whitewash systematic injustices." Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter said, in terms of the series' conclusion, "Few things this dense and ambitious are able to stick the landing when the last act comes, but The Honorable Woman does it with aplomb." A more critical look at the series as a whole came from Sonia Saraiya at The A.V. Club, who explained that "The story lobs so many ideas into the air that it can't possibly give them all a safe landing. But along the way to the ending, The Honorable Woman is enthralling—a beautiful, dark portrait of a woman against the backdrop of the continued conflict between Israel and Palestine."

The series ranked on several publications' year-end top 10 lists, including The Hollywood Reporter, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and Grantland.

Accolades

For the 72nd Golden Globe Awards, Maggie Gyllenhaal won for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film. For the 21st Screen Actors Guild Awards, Gyllenhaal was nominated for Best Female Actor in a TV Movie or Miniseries. For the 5th Critics' Choice Television Awards, it received three nominations, for Best Limited Series Series, Gyllenhaal for Best Actress in a Movie or Limited Series, and Janet McTeer or Best Supporting Actress in a Movie or Limited Series. The series was nominated for the 2015 TCA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries and Specials.

The Honourable Woman was awarded with a 2014 Peabody Award, with the organisation writing: "A visually rich, densely-plotted thriller set against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, it suggests complexities and age-old vendettas that often escape even the best documentaries, to say nothing of the evening news."

For the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards, the series received nominations for Outstanding Limited Series, Maggie Gyllenhaal for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or a Movie, and Hugo Blick for both Outstanding Directing and Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie or a Dramatic Special.

Home media release

The Honourable Woman was released on DVD in the UK on 1 September 2014, in the US on 14 October 2014, and in Canada on 25 November 2014.

The series was released on Blu-ray Disc in the UK on 20 July 2015.