Matt Roush reviews The State Within
Even without the accents, you'd know
The State Within (Feb. 17, 18 and 24 at 9 pm/ET on BBC America) was a British spy thriller for one reason: The hero doesn't pick up a gun until the final night, and he never fires it.
Which doesn't mean there isn't a high body count in this frighteningly smart three-part miniseries. The State Within, from the BBC but set mostly in Washington, D.C., is one of those bloody exercises in paranoid conspiracy where you wonder if any of the good guys — such as they ambiguously are — will survive to the end of the story.
"This makes Watergate look like a parking violation," says one of the players in this nightmare scenario, which begins when a passenger plane heading to England explodes after takeoff from Dulles Airport. The cause: a bomb, with a British Muslim implicated.
Handling the diplomatic fallout is British Ambassador Sir Mark Brydon (Jason Isaacs, the brooding Timothy Dalton look-alike from Showtime's Brotherhood), who shows his Jack Bauer stripes when he tries to rescue a victim trapped in the jet's fiery debris.
But if 24 is a roller coaster, The State Within is more of a cerebral maze of treachery. One's more fun, though the other has its dark pleasures. As Brydon searches for the truth, the viewer's mind races to untangle the plot's intricate web, involving the manipulation of defense intelligence in a buildup to war against a Central Asian country as well as the fate of a death-row inmate in Florida (Jericho's Lennie James).
All of this leads to showdowns with America's secretary of defense, played with steely gusto by Sharon Gless. Is she a villain? A dupe? You won't know until the very end, by which time you may fear it's already too late.
Party On, Nola!
Timely and timeless, American Experience's rhapsodic salute to New Orleans (Feb. 12, PBS; check listings) is a historical gumbo juxtaposing the city's fabled past with contemporary post-Katrina snapshots of a resilient city. New Orleans' hybrid culture is expressed in a creative celebration of music and food. "Survival by improvisation," one expert puts it. Let the good times once again and forever roll.
Roush Rave
"No human being is beyond forgiveness," insists the saintly title character of HBO's psychologically intense film Longford (Feb. 17, 8 pm/ET). It's the moving story of how a titled British politician, played with guileless vulnerability by Jim Broadbent, risks his career over a woman convicted of horrible child murders whom he visits in prison and later becomes an advocate for. Samantha Morton is haunting as the reviled and enigmatic Myra Hindley, and Andy Serkis (Gollum in Lord of the Rings) is pure evil as her partner in crime. But it's Broadbent as Longford, made an outcast for his empathy, whom you'll not forget.
