TV review: The Veil is a vanilla thriller — but it ticks the genre boxes
Elisabeth Moss stars in The Veil.
has attracted some cranky reviews, but I liked what I saw.
It’s a vanilla thriller that raises a nod to the best TV show of all time, The Bureau. This one has Elisabeth Moss playing Imogen, an MI6 agent sent to a refugee camp in Syria to extract a suspected female Isis leader, Adilah.
The Veil is by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, so it looks great and keeps you guessing. And it has Josh Charles (Will on The Good Wife) playing Max Peterson, a CIA guy described as ‘the most American American from America.’
Some critics don’t like Moss’ English accent, but I’ve heard worse. At first I found her bubbly persona a bit grating and out of place for a deadly secret agent. But then this is espionage and intrigue, so everyone is putting on a mask to throw everyone else off the scent.
The opening episode is given some oomph when a French agent reveals that an unidentified Isis commander is plotting an attack on a Western target within 10 days. Could this be Adilah, currently travelling through Turkey with Imogen, under the control of French intelligence?
In fairness, the opening episode needs some oomph. There was a bit too much banter between Imogen and everyone she meets, and not enough hanging-off-a-helicopter action.
But it was personal relationships that made The Bureau and Homeland into the gold standard for the modern espionage thriller. There are only so many times you can watch the lead character nearly dying.
The key personal relationship reveal is Imogen’s French handler Malik has been handling her in more ways than one, and they had an affair when she was last in Paris.
This is brought to our attention by brash CIA man Max Peterson when he lands in France, provocatively watching a supposedly top-secret French tracking video on his mobile phone.
He’s a cliched American, but cliches are fun and he re-routes the show away from secret agents saying serious things to each other in very serious voices.
The Veil isn’t the greatest TV show of all time. It’s espionage by numbers in part, and the relationship between Imogen and Adilah is a bit clunky.
However, there is enough here to suggest that it will evolve over time, and given that everyone is dodgy and hard to read, the story can twist and turn in ways you won’t predict.
If you’re in the market for an undemanding thriller, this will tick your boxes. Give it a watch.
