Sleeper Cell: American Terror, Tsunami the Aftermath - Matt Roush Reviews
How provocative is Showtime these days? From the absorbing crime-family saga
Brotherhood to the subversive
Weeds and the twisted
Dexter, the network is on a bold, exhilarating roll. It’s not the next HBO. It’s the new FX.
For more evidence, strap yourselves in for eight straight nights of unnervingly topical suspense in Sleeper Cell: American Terror, a sequel to last year’s miniseries thriller. Reminiscent of 24 but about a dozen times more realistic (though dramatically more uneven), this takes you inside a terrorist network while showing Muslims from multiple angles: progressive, extremist, with even a gay subplot.
Our returning hero is Darwyn (the charismatic Michael Ealy), a Muslim FBI agent drawn back into an undercover assignment to lead a fractious cell of zealots intent on nuclear havoc. Not only must he worry about blowing his cover, but he can’t even trust his new handler: a straight-arrow boob (Jay R. Ferguson) who helps ensnare Darwyn’s single-mom girlfriend into this year’s treacherous mess.
The incompetence surrounding Darwyn adds to the tension, especially as contrasted to the impervious menace of jailed mastermind Farik (Oded Fehr), who remains a deadly threat even when being viciously tortured.
As the story zips from Los Angeles to Saudi Arabia to Sarajevo, momentum sometimes suffers, but the cumulative impact is powerful. Which is why it’s a boon for Showtime On Demand to make all eight hours available on the day of the premiere. You won’t want to wait even a day between chapters.
Paradise Lost
HBO’s grueling two-part docudrama Tsunami, the Aftermath (Dec. 10 and 17 at 8 pm/ET) begins where cheesier disaster movies tend to end: with the title catastrophe, here the devastating tsunami of December 2004, which took an estimated 227,000 lives in 12 countries.
This film zeroes in on a resort area on the coast of Thailand, dramatizing the chaos of relief efforts as stranded tourists and shattered local villagers survey the wreckage of their lives.
Given the horrific circumstances, wrenching moments are plentiful. And yet there’s something off-putting and a bit patronizing about how Abi Morgan’s scattershot teleplay frames nearly everything from the perspective of Westerners: a grungy journalist (Tim Roth), a feisty relief worker (Toni Collette) and two British tourist families seeking lost ones. The most compelling story line, of a young survivor from a wiped-out fishing village watching developers move in on his land, is nearly lost. Which would have been yet another tragedy.
