The Veil Review: Elisabeth Moss’ Hulu Thriller Spins a Compelling Spy Yarn With a Few Loose Threads
If nothing else, The Veil is certainly efficient. While streaming series tend to stretch out their plots for far too many episodes and multiple seasons, Elisabeth Moss’ new Hulu thriller (premiering next Tuesday, April 30 on the streamer) is told across six lean episodes that mostly clock in well under an hour. Having seen all six, I can say it’s an effectively tense and propulsive drama that scratches that Homeland itch, with its tale of a damaged spy forming a close bond with a possible terrorist. But even in six hours, it still finds time for unnecessary subplots and bizarre twists that nearly ruin all the fun.
After years of being held down by the patriarchy on Mad Men and The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s nice to see Moss get a chance to fight back here as Imogen, a bad-ass British spy working with a French intelligence agency. (Hearing her speak with a UK accent is definitely jarring at first, though.) Imogen is tasked with tracking down a woman named Adilah (Yumna Marwan) who’s been accused of being an ISIS operative. Hitting the road together, Imogen and Adilah open up to each other — but neither one knows how honest the other one is being. Plus, the latest intel says a major terrorist attack is in the works, and Adilah may be involved. Can she be trusted? Can either of them?
Imogen and Adilah’s relationship is The Veil’s biggest strength, with two smart women testing each other’s limits like champion prize fighters. (Their scenes together are a psychological cat-and-mouse game that calls to mind Killing Eve, minus the sexual tension.) They have long, intense conversations about family, faith and duty, as Imogen needles Adilah with provocative questions and Adilah fires right back at her. Moss’ face is a powerful dramatic tool, and she knows how to use it here, but Marwan — a relative newcomer to American audiences — surprisingly holds her own, standing toe-to-toe with her Emmy-winning co-star.
The scripts from Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) are filled with old-school spycraft like code names and dead drops. (In these modern times, the SIM card is the new floppy disk.) It’s packed with thrilling action set pieces, too, like a shootout in the streets of Paris at night and a breathless foot chase through a cemetery. But as much as the characters are kept in the dark, we’re also kept in the dark as viewers, disoriented by bewildering fake-outs and double crosses. The series relies too heavily on convenient contrivances to keep the story going, dialogue that plainly spells out each character’s motives and weird bursts of comedy that don’t quite land. (Josh Charles plays Max, a smug U.S. envoy who’s the very essence of an ugly American, steamrolling the investigation with a macho swagger.) The Veil wants to keep you guessing, but we start to wonder if it’s worth the effort.
The biggest misstep, though, is Imogen’s past — because of course, she has to have a Traumatic Backstory — with hazy flashbacks to a creepy mentor figure played by James Purefoy. The Veil has plenty of drama already without having to delve into all of that, and with just six hours, we don’t have time for it, either. The story does pick up speed in the final episodes, and Moss ups her game accordingly, but it also stumbles in disappointing fashion. (I can’t say more because I’ve been strictly forbidden from discussing any specifics in the last two episodes.) In the end, The Veil is a decent little spy thriller, but we’re left asking ourselves how good it could’ve been if it had just stayed true to its original mission.
THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Elisabeth Moss’ spy thriller The Veil is effectively tense and provocative, but it gets derailed by unnecessary subplots.
