The Fail

FX bet big with its new limited series The Veil. Yet the espionage genre is not going through its best moment. Recently we have seen series that squandered big budgets with almost disastrous results. But there seemed to be a light at the end of the tunnel with this six episodes limited show, as the idea of a team between the creator-writer of Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight, and one of the best actresses on the planet, Elisabeth Moss, seemed destined for success, without any possibility of failure. Although, in a most unusual case, both Knight’s writing and Moss’s acting are not only terrible but nearly absurd, lacking in depth and with zero elements of credibility, tension or even common sense. So The Veil follows the pattern of current espionage series attrition.

Two female leads: Elisabeth Moss and Yumna Marwan. The plot introduces us to Moss as a British MI6 undercover agent (yes she is a spy), whose British accent is so not British that…Wait, how is it possible that such a good actress, who has won as many awards as Moss, cannot play a character with a decent British accent? From the beginning and with that great burden, things start off on the wrong foot. Anyway, Moss’ character, who uses the alias Imogen Salter, heads to a refugee camp on the Turkish-Syrian border in search of a woman (played by Yumna Marwan) who has been separated from the rest of the refugees by being identified by several witnesses as a high-ranking commander of ISIS, known as Djinn al Raqqa.

But this woman claims that she is not a terrorist but that her name is Adilah and that she has a daughter in Paris. And that she is just another victim like the rest of the women in the refugee camp. Imogen, who will smoke all the cigarettes she finds on her way, arrives at the refugee camp passing as a member of an NGO, but it’s all very strange. Her character is always smiling as if she had arrived at a local fair: she lacks the mettle or charisma of the great spies we all know.  And it’s actually hard to understand her character, because she doesn’t act in accordance with what’s going on.

Imogen manages to extract Adilah and they both escape. And this is the plot of the series: on the way to Istanbul, Paris and then London, Imogen will have to find out if this woman is Adilah, the good mother who has a little daughter in Paris, or the evil ISIS commander who is planning a terrorist attack in less than seven days. And to do so, she will try to become her…friend? Yeah, sure, why not. That will surely work. The problem that makes the series totally lose sense is that the woman tells Imogen right off the bat that yes, she is a member of ISIS, but she is not the diabolical commander but her name is Adilah and she has never killed anyone, but, well, things happen and she ended up in ISIS, ordinary stuff. Not only that, but she is a nice gal. She is from ISIS but she is one of the good ones and helped many escape and now ISIS is looking for her to kill her. And here I would like to ask to this guy Mr. Peaky Blinders’ creator: Are you fucking with me?

The most American-American America has ever produced

For some reason, and although Imogen is a member of MI6 she only works directly with the French DGSE and the officer in charge of her, Malik (Dali Benssalah) is also her lover-boyfriend-or something like that.

Another one of the show’s mistakes is the misuse or attempted misuse of a sense of humor. Nothing these people say or do is funny in any way. And this is where CIA agent Max (Josh Charles) comes in. The head of the DGSE refers to him as (for real), “The most American-American America has ever produced. He symbolizes hell.” Jesus, one imagines a real spy is coming, a mercilessly murderous degenerated savage who in the name of the CIA will end it all. But in his first scene, arriving at the airport, is greeted by Imogen’s boyfriend DGSE agent and after a silly argument they end up fighting in what looks like a sequel to the fight between Mark Darcy VS Daniel Cleaver (Bridget Jones’s Diary). The character played by Charles, as well as the rest of the cast, is difficult to understand: is he comic relief? Is he a deep character? Who are these people?

The catastrophic moment in terms of narrative and logic, however, is when Agent Max manages to get DNA from Adilah’s daughter and his argument that he makes to the DGSE is this: if the DNA of the woman Imogen took from the refugee camp matches that of the girl in Paris, it means that woman is Adilah and not the ISIS commander. And that’s just what happens. The DNA matches the girl and Agent Max and the DGSE call Imogen to tell her, forget about her, she is not the evil Djinn al Raqqa, she is the sweet and innocent Adilah El Idrissi, let her go.

Heyyyyyyyy! Wait a minute. Aren’t we in a spy world where everyone has like a thousand identities? What kind of madness is this? Yes, the woman can be Adilah and at the same time be the commander of ISIS and an ice cream vendor and any number of other facades you can come up with! BECAUSE THAT’S HOW THINGS WORK IN THAT WORLD THAT APPARENTLY MR. PEAKY BLINDERS CREATOR IS COMPLETELY UNAWARE OF!

Imogen refuses to accept this and continues on her journey of trying to befriend this woman and get the information about the terrorist attack out of her. Although following the nonsense of the series it would have been best if Imogen had smoked another cigarette, released the ISIS demoness and let her destroy the world.  That would have been just great!