Not all the bad guys are Muslims, and not all the Muslims are bad guys. That’s the premise of a new Showtime mini-series, “Sleeper Cell,” which premieres at 9 p.m. Sunday.
The gripping, heart-stopping spirit of “24” inhabits “Sleeper.” Islamic fundamentalist terrorists have targeted major American cities for attacks, the scope of which have no parallel–including Sept. 11. It falls upon one heroic figure, working deep undercover, to thwart the conspiracy.
“Sleeper Cell,” which plays out in 10 hour-long episodes, doesn’t boast the desensitizing body count and relentless mayhem of “24,” and the hero falls short of the charisma Kiefer Sutherland brings to Jack Bauer. On the other hand, the freedoms of premium cable allow “Sleeper Cell” to employ storytelling techniques, language and sexual explicitness that would be unacceptable on a broadcast network. Overall, when it comes to edge-of-your-couch tension and provocative plotting, the two serialized dramas are close kin.
Michael Ealy has the pivotal role as Darwyn Al-Sayeed, an undercover FBI agent and devout Muslim who is so intent on infiltrating the inner circle of a terrorist organization that he goes to prison to enhance his street credibility. His motivation is simple and strong: He is sickened by what a relative handful of hate-mongers are doing in the name of his religion. “These guys have nothing to do with my faith,” he says.
“Sleeper’s” gritty immediacy was born of the creators’ “visceral reaction to 9/11,” says co-executive producer Cyrus Voris. Voris was appalled post-9/11 when he saw pop culture depicting terrorism in sanitized ways, he says. “Euro-terror, vague Middle Easterners, or a conspiracy by oil companies. It was really infuriating. It just trivialized this horrible tragedy we went through in this country, how people could keep doing shows about the subject and not have any connection to the real world whatsoever.”
The politically correct message that Islam is a religion of peace is pervasive in “Sleeper,” although not to a strident extent. This was a priority, Voris says, noting that Muslims were purposefully hired as members of the crew and writing staff for their input.
“I think this show is a pretty balanced portrayal of what’s really out there. We have Islamic terrorists, but the lead character is a practicing Muslim. I think that sort of balances out the issue of whether we are just portraying Islamic terrorists, because obviously we are not.”
The Al-Sayeed character will anchor the show’s plot. He’s a resourceful American agent, but isn’t mainly driven by testosterone or patriotic zeal. Ealy, the gentle blue-eyed black actor who played the ex-con in “Barbershop” and co-starred in “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” appears at first to be a weapons runner just out of prison, where he’d been tutored by a black radical Islamic cleric. That turns out, in the first of many razor-sharp twists, to be “deep cover” for Al-Sayeed’s true identity, an ex-Army Ranger and devout Muslim committed to his own conversely peaceful “struggle against all the enemies of God.”
“Yes, the show is a thriller, about evil bad guys you want to see stopped,” Voris says. “But the sub-theme is the war within Islam. And not in some cheesy, politically correct way. It’s a great dramatic conflict for the lead character. Essentially on some level he believes the same thing, but the terrorists are perverting it for political ends. And you see him put in the belly of this beast.”
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Sneak peek
For an online preview with clips, interviews and airtimes, visit www.sho.com.
