‘Who do you trust? How do you know?’
For the last few months the nation has been gripped by the BBC’s latest drama offering, The Honourable Woman. The plot focuses on the Middle East, but it is also the story of the personal struggles of the enthralling central character, Nessa Stein (Maggie Gyllenhaal).
Writer and director of the series, Hugo Blick, explains: ‘The series centres around a woman who is deeply conflicted about past events, events that have haunted her; it is the reason why she is constantly battling a consuming internal conflict. This internal struggle for reconciliation with her past and her search for personal equilibrium is manifested in her political activities – to try to reconcile a conflict that has equally haunted a region of the world, countless lives, and political agendas for many years’. The conflict to which he refers is the same one that has dominated headlines recently: that between Israel and Palestine. The real-life backdrop to the story is part of its power.
