American television has spent the years since 9/11 keeping the enemy at arm’s length, choosing to deal with the subject through metaphor. Shows such as Lost, Invasion and the much underrated remake of Battlestar Galactica have played on the fear that scary people are among us and we don’t know who they are, without confronting the source of that fear head-on.
As the big screen finally turns its gaze on the terrorist attacks in the form of United 93 and the forthcoming World Trade Center, the small screen is also preparing to start the conversation. Sleeper Cell is a five-part miniseries that begins on Channel 4 this week after a hot reception in America late last year. It has already received a stormy welcome over here after a set of posters for its cable screening in March, which read “America’s latest hero is a Muslim straight out of jail”, were banned by London Underground.
It tells the story of an FBI agent, Darwyn Al-Sayeed (Michael Ealy), who infiltrates an extremist cabal that is set on laying waste the infidels of Los Angeles. So far, so 24, and Sleeper Cell does indeed retain that series’ unyielding momentum, seat-edge suspense and neck-breaking plot twists. But while 24 suggests that the motives of its Arab baddies are self-evident — they’re Arab baddies, stupid — Sleeper Cell is concerned with the intricacies of how and why the terrorists operate. At times it is almost visibly straining to avoid stereotypes: Darwyn is black and a devout Muslim; the cell is made up of a Bosnian, a Saudi, a French skinhead (called Christian), and a blond all-American boy taking out a grudge against his parents on the US government. On the other hand, Darwyn’s FBI contact is a bigot of the “they’re all the same” school. The message is clear: it is blinkered thinking itself that poses the greatest threat.
It so happens that my meeting with Oded Fehr, who plays the terrorist leader Faris al-Farik, takes place as news breaks that a potentially calamitous terrorist plot has been foiled in Britain. Fehr, 35, is in the process of filming the second series of Sleeper Cell, but he is still uncomfortable with a storyline so immutably linked to world events. “Filming the show right now, with all that’s going on in the Middle East and the news about the British police thwarting a terrorist plan to blow up planes . . . I mean, it’s horrendous. Filming is extremely hard. But I’m very proud of the show. By no means is it meant to be educational, but for those people who have no clue about Islam and know nothing about the conflict in the Middle East, it will create a bit more interest and might answer a few questions.”
It’s the sort of stock reply you get from any actor appearing in a controversial production these days. But for Fehr, playing a Muslim terrorist has an extra edge: the actor is a Jewish Israeli and a sworn pacifist. Born in Tel Aviv, he trained at the Old Vic in Bristol and found big-screen fame in The Mummy. Since then he’s had “first refusal on every terrorist and Arab part out there”. When his agent first called him with another terrorist role he wasn’t interested. “But I read the pilot and I felt the material was so fantastic that it warranted a meeting with the writers. It was important to me that Farik would be a very real person — not a guy who enjoys violence for violence’s sake but one who is exceedingly driven and would go to any extreme to achieve his goal. He 100 per cent believes he is in the right and that this is the correct thing to do: he doesn’t want to kill just for the killing.”
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For Fehr, the role is demanding on several levels. “To portray somebody whose views are as far from mine as is humanly possible is a huge challenge and, especially in America, people often find it difficult to separate a character they see on TV from the actor playing him. So I called my family in Israel. They said, ‘Look, is it a great role?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Will they pay you for it?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ Finally they said, ‘And are you not an actor? Well, we don’t see the problem.’ ”
When Sleeper Cell was announced in America, however, the reaction was less open-minded. “There was concern that we were going to humanise terrorists and show them in a positive light,” says Fehr. “But once people saw the show it was very clear what it was about and we’ve never had a bad reaction since. I expected it to excite controversy but I don’t believe it is that controversial — this is the life we’re leading right now.”
Sleeper Cell, Wed, Channel 4, 10pm