The Grid

What a pity to write in all that long distance control of on-the-spot special forces operations via voice and monitor. Can you imagine hard-arsed Delta and SAS troopers taking direct orders from pushy females watching monitors from several thousand miles away? Especially females that keep on falling in love with their operatives all over the place? And Julie Margulies was straight out of a Hollywood daytime soap - the bitch-maneater, on top of the job, ruthless, uncompromising... Hair never out of place, cute hats, purposeful big-shoulders walk. Puhlease! And why superimpose dozens of subtitles without giving viewers time enough to actually read them. There's a rule about this and it's based on basic intelligence: subtitles are there to be read - if you don't want to give enough time to read them, then simply refrain from using them at all. Who was the brain behind this? Despite all, The Grid was very well made and deserved something a whole lot better in the acting and directorial department. Shame.

I have just seen the first episode of the series, and it was compelling and well made.

It reminded me of watching 24, without the high speed tension, and localized setting. This is a global 24 that isn't really hour by hour. But it works well, very well. In fact as you're watching you can sit there and see it working very well. It doesn't just involve the Americans doing everything, which is a nice change. I guess I should organize this a bit better and go into detail about a few of the things I like.

First, I think recent events of the 9/11 commission and their ideas of making a centralized system, as seen in the show. It shows how the CIA and other agencies seem to dislike each other and in fact seems that it is quite like real life. These with recent events make it feel as if you could be watching the news of what could really be happening.

Second, it's nice to be in London, seeing MI5 and MI6, doing their own work, and the relationship between those to agencies, as well as US intelligence.

Third, the acting is quite good for a made for TV movie, and the development of each was well done. It is quite bloody, and has a nice amount of explosions. The camera work is nice and works well.

Fourth, and lastly, the story itself seems to be very well crafted. It fits in so well to today's society that it is quite capable of being a news broadcast rather then fiction.

In the end it is an all around well crafted TV "limited" series, and I will be back next Monday to watch it again! 9/10

This was a powerful series. Well-acted, Well-written. I disagree with people who say Julianna Margulies was out of her element, her character Merrin was just the type of woman you want in the government tough, smart, and strong-willed. Dylan McDermot was good as the Special Agent in-charge of New York's Joint terrorism taskforce. My favorite character was Jemma Redgrave's Emily Tuthill. Jemma was an actress I had never seen before she gave a very powerful performance especially toward the end in her scenes with the actor who played Reza, the CIA analyst turned field agent. Anyone that feels that Emily and Reza's scenes were out of place in a serious drama, I say well love, intimacy, and the beginnings of a strong relationship can be born under stranger circumstances.

In terms of Screen writing the strongest character relationship were the scenes between Maren and under mentor Former Secretary of State Jay Aldrich played by Robert Forester. When Aldrich describes Maren as being cool under pressure and well suited for chaos, the audience gets the feeling that Maren was both highly trained and well suited for her position but, written as well as it was, it also communicates that Maren's skills are both battle worn and still highly effective.

The DVD is reasonably priced at 14.00 dollars or so on two discs, with great extras about film and actor's discussing the mindset needed to work in Counterterrorism, buy this powerful miniseries. I would call this a must for anyone interested in Counterterrorism work for the government. I realize that television dramas like "The Agency" and "The Grid" are fictional and not really how working in Counterterrorism is, but "The Grid" made the journey both mildly realistic and entertaining.

At least it gets one interested in learning about the subject matter from non-fiction sources. To begin I suggest reading "Against All Enemies" by former NSC Manager Richard A. Clarke.

"The Grid" (we never really know to what the title refers) is a 6x45 min miniseries action/drama about international terrorism. The bad guys are a rogue terror cell operating out of Yemen, deploying operatives to the UK and the US where they are to attack with sarin nerve gas. The good guys are a joint task force of Brits and US Federal agents who are out to stop the bad guys. The film leapfrogs incessantly from Yemen to London to Washington to Saudi Arabia to Chicago, etc. globe trotting in a surprisingly well orchestrated conglomeration of good vs evil Muslims, interagency wrangling, boyish suicide bombers, covert ops, murder, love, and much more given this US/UK co-op's budgetary constraints. On the upside, "The Grid" gets busy and stays busy sufficient to engross and make some of the obvious histrionics easily overlooked as it provides an acceptable overview of the amorphous nature of terrorist cells and the international agency cooperation required to effectively cope with this 21 century threat. On the downside the film is difficult to follow at times, somewhat disjointed in an effort to be all things to all people, pushes the believability envelope occasionally, and is generally too pat to be real. Overall, "The Grid" is an acceptable miniseries worth a look for those who can commit to a 4.5 hour small screen watch. Those who enjoy this miniseries should also check out "Traffic (2004)". (B-)

An interesting joint venture between BBC, Fox and TNT. The problems of international cooperation between security agencies loom large in the mini-series (shown in three parts by the BBC). But they also seem to have affected the production itself. The first two parts were exciting, despite having to keep tabs on fast-moving events across the globe and track a number of one-dimensional characters.

The final section tried to give some more flesh to these characters - and that's when the problems started. The two 'leads' (at least their names came up before the title) were pathetic, with wooden acting, embarrassing dialogue and trashy sentimentality. Who are Dylan McDermott and Juliana Marguelis and how did they get the leads? They are handicapped even further with silly names - Marin and Max Canary, though not as silly as Tom Skerritt's "Acton Sandman"!

The 'minor' actors, notably Bernard Hill - superb as a grizzled security chief showing Skerritt what real acting is all about - along with Piter Fattouche, who triumphs over the disadvantage of being cast as the "good Moslem" and Jemma Redgrave, who was absolutely brilliant as a troubled British security agent. But the final part had too much of the Americans, presumably to justify the Fox/TNT money, and it fell away sadly. So the high opinion I had of The Grid after Part two was drastically modified by the end of Part three, confirming my belief that I do not want to see IMDb reviews from reviewers who have only seen part of a series.