- Network: BBC Two , Sundance Channel , SundanceTV
- Series Premiere Date: Jul 3, 2014
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Critic Reviews
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This demanding and deliberately paced thriller (written and directed with ruthless intelligence by Hugo Blick) stands apart and above the glut of original programming. With its urgently compelling mysteries and shocking reveals, it's the equal of last summer's brilliant Broadchurch.
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Whatever your viewing regimen, Honorable Woman is highly recommended for its distinctive approach, bravura performances, overall digestibility and, yes, degree of difficulty.
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The miniseries weaves a spectacularly well-constructed story--intricate, dense, demanding and rewarding--about loyalty, deception, forgiveness and revenge.
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The series is ambitious and shaggy--those two go hand-in-hand--but despite its blurry spots, The Honorable Woman is hard not to watch all the way through. The story sucks viewers in farther and farther down a rabbit hole that does not end.
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The Honorable Woman is a slow-building but gripping story, regardless of where you stand on Mideast politics; Gyllenhaal delivers a remarkably measured and moving performance.
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While there are some deeply disturbing images, The Honorable Woman is an astute, sensitive and at times delicate psychological drama that is evenhanded in the nonincendiary sense of the word: No side is entirely to blame, and there are villains, innocent victims and foolish dupes on both sides.
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The Honorable Woman is really a thriller and, at its best, it's on a level with something like "Homeland" at its best.
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A beauty that requires time and patience, but at least strongly hints at a payoff that will reward both.
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We can confirm that it boasts a string of crackerjack performances from the likes of Stephen Rea as a hangdog spy, Janet McTeer as his spook boss, Lubna Azabal as the housekeeper of Nessa's brother (Andrew Buchan), and Gyllenhaal herself. [25 Jul/1 Aug 2014, p.105]
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All in all, this is an impressive piece of work, absorbing provided that you're willing to meet it on its own storytelling terms.
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A smart, deliberately paced, closed-ended miniseries.
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The Honorable Woman" doesn't give itself away easily--I was well into the eight episodes before a few things began to be clearer--but Blick uses his other characters so effectively that the wait doesn't seem wasted.
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The almost contemplative tone of the piece makes the suspenseful moments jump off the screen. But the pace, which is decidedly deliberate to begin with, slows about halfway through, as the political becomes deeply personal.
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The Honorable Woman is in many ways, most of them cerebral, an extremely impressive piece of work.
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What works about The Honorable Woman is how well its particular story and larger themes echo each other: trust and mistrust, hope and disappointment, resentment and revenge, repeating for generations.
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Writer/director Hugo Blick skillfully walks the hairline between a well-paced adventure thriller and a psychological study that gives us enough time to appreciate the nuances of the character we're watching.
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This often-brilliant thriller is doing what great political thrillers do--commenting on the real world while also presenting an escapist one for us to leave it behind. It’s also perfectly in line with the smart, adult, well-made programming Sundance has been delivering of late.
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The series couldn't have arrived at a more timely moment for such subject matter, but there's no point looking for even-handedness or a lack thereof in a work that offers only--give or take a caustic political observation or two--exhilarating drama.
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The Honorable Woman is intriguing from the start, but almost in spite of itself, as everyone seems to have a dark secret and nothing is what it seems.
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Although Blick's structural concept skirts close to mannered gimmickry, it also makes artistic sense. We are slowly but unavoidably drawn into the ever thickening mire of secrets, lies and shifting allegiances in both the lives of the characters and, of course, in the constant strife in the Middle East.
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Creator Hugo Blick, who wrote and directed every episode, displays a knack for precisely parceling out bafflingly vague innuendos with the occasional nugget of undiluted exposition that comes as a sweet relief, not just for the viewer, but for the characters who are often as clueless as we are.
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The Middle East lends itself to intrigues, backstabbings, frontstabbings and long-term vendettas like few other places, and writer-director Hugo Blick lets his puzzle pieces assemble with slow, deliberate power and more than a few surprises.
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The Honorable Woman is great, in the most traditional sense of the word, which makes its flaws all the more frustrating. The first three episodes are often overwhelmed by soundtrack and studded with near-still-life shots meant, apparently, to offset the shootouts and establish the High Art factor of the series.
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The Honorable Woman certainly doesn’t evoke any enmity. The problem, rather, is that it doesn’t provide enough thrills or momentum to completely reward the viewing commitment of its friends.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 77 out of 94
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Mixed: 8 out of 94
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Negative: 9 out of 94
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Sep 15, 2014
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Oct 13, 2014
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Sep 10, 2014