"Elisabeth Moss stars in 'The Veil,' a spy thriller that slowly unravels"
"The six-episode show starts with Adilah (Yumna Marwan) at a refugee camp near the Syrian-Turkish border. Is she really an ISIS mastermind with crucial details on an upcoming terrorist attack? Imogen (Moss), a French agent, is the one tasked with figuring that out. As you'd expect, this attracts attention from both French officials and a CIA agent (Josh Charles) who parachutes in, trying to manage the chaotic scenario like an American intruding in a delicate international affair.
Written by Steven Knight, a British screenwriter popular for 'Peaky Blinders' (and also 'Great Expectations' and 'All the Light We Cannot See'), 'The Veil' plays around with common spy themes. There's the tense altercation between Charles' character and his French counterpart (Dali Benssalah), which even leads to a laughably poor shoving fight.
However, the series starts to fall into spy genre stereotypes. From Adilah's quest to reunite with her child to Imogen wrestling with her past, these familiar motifs weaken the fascinating relationship between the two leads as Imogen endeavors to crack through Adilah's defenses.
Moss is amazing at delivering steely gazes and silent intensity, and she seems to enjoy immersing herself into this character's boots and street fights, possibly because she's not the typical lead for such an assignment.
But despite Moss's exceptional performance, the show ultimately feels routine among the plethora of secret agent series.
'The Veil' is appropriately titled, as it begins with a shy veil concealing its enigma. But as the story keeps tugging at that, this thin premise becomes increasingly fragile."
'The Veil' premieres April 30 on Hulu.
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Source: edition.cnn.com
