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Sleeper Cell
SERIES: Showtime, Sunday/Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday 10:00p (60 minutes)


8.4

based on 26 reviews
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based on 49 votes
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TV:

Sleeper Cell: American Terror

Official Show Site

Starring Michael Ealy, Oded Fehr, Grant Heslov, Henri Lubatti, Alex Nesic, Blake Shields, Melissa Sagemiller, and James LeGros

An FBI agent goes undercover in a Los Angeles-based terrorist sleeper cell in this 10-hour Showtime limited series.

GENRE(S):	Drama
CREATED BY:	Ethan Reiff Cyrus Voris
FIRST AIR DATE:	December 4, 2005
LAST AIR DATE:	December 18, 2005
ALSO ON:	Note that all nine episodes air between 12/4 and 12/18.

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

New York Daily News David Hinckley

In theme and execution, in caliber of performance and level of dramatic tension, "Sleeper Cell" is an impressive, relentlessly gripping drama.

Newsday Diane Werts

A rich character drama and riveting suspenser that makes Fox's "24" seem lackluster.

Orlando Sentinel Hal Boedeker

Sleeper Cell moves with more sophistication than most crime dramas.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen

Smart, thrilling and politically timely, "Sleeper Cell" works overtime to mix believable character drama with jolts of surprising plot twists.

TV Guide Matt Roush

This engrossing and unnerving nail-biter is a rare treat: a thriller with a brain and a soul.

Hollywood Reporter Barry Garron

This is a first-rate series that explores the hearts and minds of terrorists even as it presents scene after scene of suspense and action.

LA Weekly Robert Abele

At times it plays like a hybrid of the ticking-bomb thrills from ["24"] and the moral thorniness that undergirds HBO’s excellent crime series The Wire.

Boston Globe Matthew Gilbert

An eerie -- and excellent -- new series that makes ''24" look more than ever like a broadly drawn comic strip.

Detroit Free Press Mike Duffy

"Sleeper Cell" works as a smart, sharply styled thriller about a very serious subject.

People Weekly Tom Gliatto

The second half builds steadily and surely toward a potential meet-and-greet with the apocalypse. [12 Dec 2005, p.39]

Time James Poniewozik

Imperfect but chilling.... In the end, Sleeper Cell is every bit as nailbiting as 24, with one crucial difference: neither the terrorists nor the Feds are supergeniuses.

PopMatters Cynthia Fuchs

Sleeper Cell is compelling television primarily for its excellent performances and chilling premises, rather than its plots. Alarming as these may be, they are rendered here with predictable rising and falling action, a bit of romance, and some tidily resolved conflicts.

Wall Street Journal Dorothy Rabinowitz

Highly compelling most of the time.

San Jose Mercury News Charlie McCollum

While it is more intriguing than gripping, the drama has considerable power in its best moments, many of which will come in the last episodes.

The New York Times Alessandra Stanley

"Sleeper Cell" is better than "24."

Philadelphia Inquirer Ellen Gray

Most of the time, it's... pretty gripping.

The New Yorker Nancy Franklin

Despite the mostly awful dialogue, “Sleeper Cell” succeeds on the strength of its plot.

Baltimore Sun David Zurawik

If one is looking for a TV drama that earnestly tries to reflect and speak to our lives and times, it would be hard to do better than Sleeper Cell.

Entertainment Weekly Gillian Flynn

All of Sleeper Cell's didacticism would be forgiven if it were more entertaining. [2 Dec 2005, p.67]

Variety Brian Lowry

Despite laudable elements -- particularly the magnetic Oded Fehr as the cell leader -- [the] series is too uneven to dub this ambitious mission a complete success.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Melanie McFarland

Fehr's performance is worth noting, if only because his cool demeanor is frighteningly at odds with the insane rhetoric pouring out of his mouth. His portrayal may be the show's greatest point of interest -- that is, if you aren't annoyed by Shields, or hypnotized into a slumber by Ealy's never-ending "haunted past" routine.

Village Voice Joy Press

Sleeper Cell moves way too slowly to get anyone's pulse racing—except maybe the Arab American community, which will almost certainly protest, despite the writers' awkward attempts to give equal screen time to "good" and "bad" Muslims.

New York Magazine John Leonard

Sleeper Cell tries laudably to entertain us and to complicate us simultaneously. But we also experience the Stockholm syndrome in reverse. The more time we spend with these people, the less we care about them.

Los Angeles Times Paul Brownfield

For all its putative complexity, then, its passing examination of radical Islam versus peaceable Islam, its allusions to Guantanamo Bay and the Iraq insurgency, "Sleeper Cell" feels more like "The Shield," the L.A.-based cop drama on FX, the characters talking in overly stylized, expository quips, the L.A. cityscape whipping past in convincing fashion.

USA Today Robert Bianco

Cobbled together out of hundreds of undercover/caper movie clichés, Sleeper Cell is so absurdly detached from the real world, it makes 24 look like a documentary.

Kansas City Star Aaron Barnhart

The one thing “Sleeper Cell” does commendably is to suggest that there is a struggle going on for the soul of Islam, and that al-Qaida does not have the only say in the matter. But that message is swamped by predictable thriller filler and cheap production values.

The average user rating for this tv show is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 49 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

DQ S gave it a5:
Wildly uneven episode to episode, and character to character. The dialogue seems borrowed from Tom Clancy novels (which is not a compliment) and most of the characters are two dimensional (some less than that). If you're watching just for action - search elsewhere. If you're watching for a dialectic on America's confusion of Islam with Terrorism - search elsewhere.

Nancy H gave it a10:
Extremely chilling, terrific acting and very realistic. Can't wait for 3rd season to see if Darwyn survives.

Trent B gave it a0:
More mindless neocon propaganda vomited onto our screens. This country is going to collapse into a police state if people are actually believing this garbage. Fellow citizens, start questioning your government for God's sake! They're taking away our liberties and expanding federal police control over states and cities. Terrorists don't have any power over us--in fact they have less power to threaten us than street criminals. It's all a facade, and the Feds are using it to grab more control over our lives.

nick h gave it a10:
Totally refreshing to see anything on tv that attempts to demonstrate why terrorists are willing to go to such extreme measures. Wish more americans were as focused and disciplined. We'd then truely be the strongest nation. But most americans just dont have anything to so strong to believe in. Were too obsessed with american idols and make-up products and plastic surgery and football and music with no worthwhile message

Shandra S gave it a10:
This show was the best and I think that they should have a season 2! If that is possible because Michael Ealy is very hott!

Mitchell K gave it a10:
I haven't seen television written any better than this.

Deydel T gave it a10:
excellent must watch it little kiss from France

Sleeper Cell SERIES: Showtime, Sunday/Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday 10:00p (60 minutes)

Sleeper Cell
SERIES: Showtime, Sunday/Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday 10:00p (60 minutes)