Maggie Gyllenhaal makes her BBC drama debut tonight with new series The Honourable Woman.
The 8-part series is a taut political thriller with Gyllenhaal leading a star-studded cast that includes Andrew Buchan, Stephen Rea, Lindsay Duncan, Janet McTeer and Tobias Menzies.
The series centres around Nessa Stein (Gyllenhaal) who is deeply troubled about past events that have haunted her. Stein is constantly battling a consuming internal conflict – for reconciliation with her past and her search for personal equilibrium. This struggle is manifested in her political activities, trying to reconcile a conflict that has equally haunted a region of the world, countless lives and political agendas for many years.
Nessa Stein’s father was a Zionist arms procurer, and as children, she and her brother Ephra (Buchan) witness his assassination. As an adult, inheriting her father’s company, she dramatically inverts its purpose from supplying arms to laying high-spec data cabling networks between Israel and the West Bank. Now in her thirties, her sudden appointment as a life peer, apparently due to her tireless promotion of projects for reconciliation between the Israelis and Palestinians, creates an international political maelstrom.
The Honourable Woman begins at 9pm tonight on BBC Two. Preview the first episode of the show below in our gallery:
