The Veil: Web of Lies Review: Some plots always get you hooked

In the time it takes you to read this review, the workaholic screenwriter and producer Steven Knight will have written a new project, perhaps the script for the promised movie ‘Peaky Blinders’, his most popular creation. In just over a year, four series written (in three cases, also created or co-created) by him have been released: his adaptations of ‘Great Expectations’ and ‘The Light You Can’t See’, the still unpublished ‘This town’ (about the formation of a new band in the eighties!) and the paranoid ‘thriller’ that concerns us, one of those classic spy stories in which no one is what they seem or do things for apparent reasons.

‘The veil: network of lies’ is presented, for much of its footage, as a long battle of wits between two complicated female characters who are trying to get a secret out of each other, or in other words, their secret lives. On one side we have an MI6 agent called (at least now) Imogen Salter, played by a Elisabeth Moss with a British accent that may be an unnecessary distractionShe has been recruited by the DGSE, the French secret service, for a mission that would be highly complex for anyone, but not, in principle, for a prodigy of deception like her.

On the other side we have a French woman named (in theory) Adilah El Idrissi (Yumna Marwan), attacked by a group of Yazidi women in a refugee camp on the Syrian-Turkish border. One of them identified her as a member of ISIS, and there is some indication that she is in fact a commander in the terrorist group. Imogen must pose as an NGO worker and gain Adilah’s trust until she finds out the truth: how much of a villain is Adilah and how much of the opposite? Her talents as a manipulator could prevent a bomb from detonating in a major American city within a week.

The two women, both false and sincere (the spy, like the actor, is a liar who works with his truth), end up being honest with each other while still hiding important parts: “Even though we are lying to each other, I feel that I’ve been more honest with her than with most people,” Imogen says at one point. Both are shape-shifting creatures, like the djinns of pre-Islamic Arab mythology, which has its importance in this story, like Shakespeare’s almost complete work.

What might seem like an almost minimalist story, hand in hand between two great actresses, is soon revealed to be ‘Thriller’ of increasing geographic and geopolitical scale. While Imogen and Adilah are trying to tickle each other during a road trip with several stops, DGSE agent Malik Amar (Dali Benssalah), Imogen’s lover, to be exact, has to deal in Paris with the demands of his CIA rival Max Peterson (the always welcome Josh Charles), a guy whose repellency is matched only by his efficiency. There are clashes of work cultures, major geographical leaps and invitations to global terrorism paranoia.

Not everything works equally well: to the aforementioned Moss accent we must add somewhat failed comic attempts and dialogues, sometimes, lacking any organicity. Perhaps Knight should slow down a little and learn to delegate instead of continuing to write all or almost all the chapters of his series alone. That said, let’s see who is the brave one who leaves ‘The veil: network of lies’ after the first or second chapter. Some plots will never cease to captivate, including those involving lies, betrayal, ambiguous identities and dubious loyalties. In other words, those that operate in the universe of le Carré.