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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed shows.
Sleeper Cell
EMAILPRINTSERIES: Showtime, Sunday/Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday 10:00p (60 minutes)

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 26 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 49 votes
Read user comments
Rate this show >
Show Info
Genre(s): Drama
Created By:
Ethan Reiff
Cyrus Voris
First Air Date: December 4, 2005
Summary
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.
Also On Metacritic
TV: Sleeper Cell: American Terror
Episode Guide & More Info: More about this show at TV.com
Also On The Web: Official Show Site
What The Critics Said
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...
New York Daily NewsDavid Hinckley
In theme and execution, in caliber of performance and level of dramatic tension, "Sleeper Cell" is an impressive, relentlessly gripping drama.
Read Full Review >NewsdayDiane Werts
A rich character drama and riveting suspenser that makes Fox's "24" seem lackluster.
Read Full Review >Orlando SentinelHal Boedeker
Sleeper Cell moves with more sophistication than most crime dramas.
Read Full Review >Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob Owen
Smart, thrilling and politically timely, "Sleeper Cell" works overtime to mix believable character drama with jolts of surprising plot twists.
Read Full Review >TV GuideMatt Roush
This engrossing and unnerving nail-biter is a rare treat: a thriller with a brain and a soul.
Hollywood ReporterBarry 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.
Read Full Review >LA WeeklyRobert 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.
Read Full Review >Boston GlobeMatthew Gilbert
An eerie -- and excellent -- new series that makes ''24" look more than ever like a broadly drawn comic strip.
Read Full Review >Detroit Free PressMike Duffy
"Sleeper Cell" works as a smart, sharply styled thriller about a very serious subject.
Read Full Review >People WeeklyTom Gliatto
The second half builds steadily and surely toward a potential meet-and-greet with the apocalypse. [12 Dec 2005, p.39]
TimeJames 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.
Read Full Review >PopMattersCynthia 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.
Read Full Review >San Jose Mercury News/Contra Costa TimesCharlie 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.
Read Full Review >The New YorkerNancy Franklin
Despite the mostly awful dialogue, “Sleeper Cell” succeeds on the strength of its plot.
Read Full Review >Baltimore SunDavid 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.
Read Full Review >Entertainment WeeklyGillian Flynn
All of Sleeper Cell's didacticism would be forgiven if it were more entertaining. [2 Dec 2005, p.67]
VarietyBrian 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.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-IntelligencerMelanie 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.
Read Full Review >Village VoiceJoy 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.
Read Full Review >New York MagazineJohn 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.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles TimesPaul 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.
Read Full Review >USA TodayRobert 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.
Read Full Review >Kansas City StarAaron 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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this 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
