The Honourable Woman (BBC Two)

Time for a thread? Cos in ep 4 shit just got real

Love this show. Cathartic right now to see Israel/Palestine dealt with via drama instead of news and op-eds. Also, Blick's a fantastic director of suspense.

**spoilers thru ep 4**

i just rewatched the 4 episodes so far, and maybe it's old age creeping up on me but it was rewarding - i noticed all sorts of little beats and glances i hadn't the first time. some stuff still eluded me. why did the police ask ephra for a DNA test? what pointed them down that road? was it rachel prodding them? it was much clearer on second watch that rachel's attitude towards attica (sp?) changed immediately after the police had cleared ephra of being the dad.

but what i'm wondering the most is what IS the secret that nessa is supposed to keep safe?? the money for the hostage? i can see why nessa wouldn't want that revealed, although it's not clear if she even knows about it. but why would burn-face care? is the secret kasem's provenance? nessa's (fateh?) tribunal explicitly told her that the terms of her release guaranteed her the right to speak about what had happened, to anyone, and that they would say nothing - but what is motivating burn-face to load for bear and hop a plane to rye?

it seems like it has to be something that both she and her rapist have an almost equal interest in keeping quiet. and so it has made them unlikely allies, in a way - nessa effectively contracts him to kill her sex-on-wheels bodyguard.

nessa/gyllenhall's physical plea to the tribunal absolutely floored me btw. and maybe this is a stretch but it seems to me like it encapsulated not just the power of middle-eastern patriarchy, and how utterly dependent on the whims of men with beards even the most powerful women can be, but the history of acting itself. nessa becomes an actor, recreating this millenia-old gesture that is practically pre-language, as unmistakable in in 2014 as it might have been 4 thousand years ago, and that this enactment - and invocation of other women, other people, in other times, drawing on the cumulative power of the gesture - is more powerful than any legal cleverness nessa might be tempted to employ

Heard great things about this show.

SPOILERS

So her from the IT crowd giving birth yelling "SHE KILLED MY HUSBAND" while armed men smashed in the door made me piss myself. A risible misstep in an otherwise excellent series.

Oh there's a thread for this. I almost gave up after the first three episodes, but it's got quite good now. Nonsense, but still quite good.

Feel like they're setting things up so that Stephen Rea figures everything out but Monica still gets his job and his boss has to cover up the US involvement. Not really sure what the conspirators' goal is - forcing concessions from the Israelis in the name of peace? Is Monica the honourable woman?

Ah that's the fun with stuff like that, never knowing what's going on and who's playing who.

Nonsense, but still quite good.

Yeah I guess it is nonsense when you think about it but it's all executed in such a classy, stately manner that I can't help but get invested. It's also a big relief to watch something with such glacial editing when I've been binge watching Orphan Black and 24 recently.

Yeah, I should probably stop thinking about the plot and enjoy the ride.

Although: that phrase in the credits referring to "the price of a nation" just came back to me and I think it will turn out to be important.

So the kidnaping was set up with Atika's knowledge?? The boy she raised as her own son?

Yeah it's a pity that Atika is still an exotic cypher. She does seem to miss Kasim but perhaps she's also confident that he'll be taken care of. We're led to believe (imo) that the Palestinians have played an extremely long game and made many sacrifices because...well, it's the "price of a nation".

Solid to the end, if preposterous. I appreciated the lack of shock reveals in the final episode.

The only thing I didn't understand is why Nessa wasn't killed right away by Zahid al-Zahid's men when they discovered she wasn't already dead.

i.e. why keep her alive? Just so that he could have that muahaha taunting encounter with her?

Also, er, what was "She has agreed She. Has. Agreed."?

That one I can answer - the Secretary of State agreed to go along with the plan.

Beyond that, why did the "bad guys" need to rig all those shadowy conspiracies and kidnappings in the first place? Why not just assassinate Nessa and Ephra in the UK and blame it on Israelis?

the Secretary of State agreed to go along with the plan.

What plan? Like..... back before Samir Meshal had been killed, what was the plan?

I mean, we know that before Meshal was killed, Monica had planted bogus information to push Shlomo out of the picture.

She had also met with Samir Meshal in a D.C. hotel.

Unrelatedly, Ephra had installed bugging equipment on Shlomo's cables which was being monitored by both Israeli and US intelligence and which apparently could capture almost 100% of Palestinian voice traffic.

Because of the bugging equipment, both Israel and the US heard Samir Meshal say "She has agreed" on the phone.

If we're to understand that he was talking about the US Sec State, does that mean there was a plot hatched by Monica and Palestine to get the US not to veto Palestinian statehood BEFORE any of the events of E01 came to pass?

(And that the US then offed Meshal before Israel was able to lay their hands on him to find out what he meant?)

If we're to understand that he was talking about the US Sec State, does that mean there was a plot hatched by Monica and Palestine to get the US not to veto Palestinian statehood BEFORE any of the events of E01 came to pass?

Yes. Before that, we don't really know who initiated what when. Was Atika sent to the UK as a sleeper agent 7 years ago, or did she get recruited later?

The only thing I didn't understand is why Nessa wasn't killed right away by Zahid al-Zahid's men when they discovered she wasn't already dead.

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, August 22, 2014 9:39 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i.e. why keep her alive? Just so that he could have that muahaha taunting encounter with her?

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, August 22, 2014 9:39 AM (Yesterday)

Yeah I didn't really get this. Maybe the guys who found her alive didn't feel they had the authority to personally kill someone so important? Also her Blackberry being plugged in next to her bed implied someone wanted her to call someone in the UK to say she was still alive.

Of all the implausibilities in the show I found the US secretary of state going along with a conspiracy to grant Palestine statehood to be the most implausible (unless I misunderstood that plot point).

V enjoyable and classily executed programme all round, though.

Hugh was my favourite character ultimately.

otm yes

Nessa was the worst character in a respectable drama in living memory ime

yeah four episodes in starting to wonder about this ^^

Ah Nessa wasn't that bad - the fact that her philanthropy was probably mainly for self serving reasons was interesting. However I could never quite decide if she was intended to be likeable - if she was they failed big time.

What was it she said to Bloom, sitting at the foot of his hospital bed? "I'm a bit chilly."