The Best Show You're Not Watching (You Infidel)

Well, maybe you are.  I wasn't anyway, until last night.

It's Showtime's Sleeper Cell and it's just become my favorite show (don't worry Lost, this is just a fling).  They're already through an entire 10-episode season, but you can get the first 5 on iTiunes.

The show is basically Sopranos-meets-al Qaeda.  With a splash of Donny Brasco.  They even hang out in a Sopranosesque gentlemen's club ("Jihada Bing?").

The plot follows a Los Angeles-based radical Islamic terror cell infiltrated by an FBI agent.  With how relatively little is known about the inner workings of such groups (even compared to the mafia), it's obviously hard to know how faithful the plot lines are, but it certainly hits the mark in terms of entertainment.

It follows the several members of the cell in their personal lives, their backstories offering glances into their formative pre-holy war years, the financing of their operations, the interagency dynamics at play in intelligence community, etc.

I was most pleasantly surprised by the fact that (so far anyway - I'm only through 3 episodes) it's remarkably apolitical (in terms of American left vs. right politics, that is).  There's very little "director's message" under the surface one way or another, which was refreshing. The terrorists themselves spout off now and then about American arrogance and the evils of western civilization, but then again, these are the bad guys.

That said, they've given the members of the cell families and love interests and work-a-day jobs, so the show is effective at lending an air of protagonism to the murderous scumbags (the Sopranos model at work again).

Two idolatrous thumbs up.