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Airdate: The Looming Tower

US drama on how events set the path for the tragedy of 9/11 has its Free to Air premiere on SBS.

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US drama The Looming Tower has its Free to Air premiere on SBS on September 11.

The 10 part season is based on the Pulitzer Prize winning exposé of the same name by Lawrence Wright.

The series stars Jeff Daniels, Tahar Rahim, Peter Sarsgaard.

Originally produced by Legendary Television for Hulu,  it has previously screened in Australia through Amazon.

Based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning book, The Looming Tower traces the rising threat of Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in the late 1990s and how the rivalry between the FBI and CIA during that time may have inadvertently set the path for the tragedy of 9/11. The series follows members of the I-49 Squad in New York and Alec Station in Washington, D.C., the counter-terrorism divisions of the FBI and CIA, as they travel the world fighting for ownership of information while seemingly working toward the same goal – trying to prevent an imminent attack on U.S. soil. 

John O’Neill (Jeff Daniels), the bull-headed chief of the I-49 Squad, is rightly convinced that the U.S. has been targeted for an attack by Al-Qaeda. He and his protégé, Muslim- American FBI agent Ali Soufan (Tahar Rahim), face deliberately insufficient cooperation from other organisations within the federal government. Specifically, their counterparts within the CIA, led by the frequently antagonistic Martin Schmidt (Peter Sarsgaard). 

The Looming Tower also stars Wrenn Schmidt (Diane Marsh), Bill Camp (Robert Chesney), Louis Cancelmi (Vince Stuart), Virginia Kull (Kathy Shaughnessy), Ella Rae Peck (Heather), Sullivan Jones (Floyd Bennet), and Michael Stuhlbarg (Richard Clarke).

9pm Wednesday September 11 on SBS.

6 Responses

  2. Yep brilliant series and it also drew some from former FBI Agent Ali Soufan’s book The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda plus the 9/11 Commission Report. Some of the stuff you think it is spiced up for TV especially around Jeff Daniels character John O’Neill however nope it happened. Also at times you think the character of Martin Schmidt couldn’t have been like that, however look up “Michael Scheuer doesn’t like John O’Neil” on YouTube and you’l find the Schmidt character is so close to him it’s scary (maybe best to look only if you’ve seen the series).

    1. Yep 18 years … still remember it well … watching it live on CNN in the boss’s office in Athens, Greece having only flown there from Oz a couple of weeks earlier. Was due to fly to the US a few months later, but decided to give it a miss.

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