On Thursday, USA will air the first episode of Dig, an event series starring Jason Isaacs (The Patriot, the Harry Potter films) and Anne Heche (Hung, Six Days Seven Nights). With layers of intrigue on and off the screen, we thought we’d give you a primer on what to expect from USA’s new 10-part action thriller.
FBI Agent Peter Connelly (Isaacs) investigates the murder of a young American student in an ancient section of Jerusalem. As the mystery unfolds, Connolly uncovers a possible religious conspiracy thousands of years in the making.
Set against an archaeological dig, the series has similarities to the Indiana Jones franchise (the pilot even acknowledges Raiders of the Lost Ark in a conversation about the Ark of the Covenant). Dig also has a conspiratorial darkness akin to the The Da Vinci Code; part of the set-up includes the sacrifice of a red calf straight out of the Hebrew Bible and a creepy religious cult in the nowhere-lands of New Mexico. Action scenes through the winding alleys of Jerusalem are worthy of a Jason Bourne chase scene, and the mismatched dynamic of Connolly and Israeli detective Golan Cohen (Ori Pfeffer) is is part of a trend shared by other recent shows, including True Detective, The Bridge, and Broadchurch.
In addition to Isaacs, Dig stars Heche as Lynn Monahan, an FBI attache stationed in Jerusalem and Peter’s “boss with benefits.” Israeli actor Pfeffer plays Cohen, a lone wolf and frequent rule-bender who is forced to work the case with Connolly. A Fine Frenzy musician Alison Sudol is the mysterious red-haired archaeological student who captures Peter’s attention (and will be familiar to Transparent viewers as Glitterish frontwoman Kaya), and fans of The Unit will recognize Regina Taylor as Ruth Ridell, the American ambassador to Israel. In the New Mexico storyline, Breaking Bad‘s David Costabile is a wrathful religious leader who runs up against an unpredictable cult member played by Lauren Ambrose, best known for her role as Claire Fisher in five seasons of Six Feet Under.
Dig brings together two very well-known — and very different — television storytellers: Gideon Raff (Homeland) and Tim Kring (Heroes). Raff, a Jerusalem native, was looking to partner up on Dig when Kring’s name entered the mix. “I just thought he would be perfect for this because we tell stories from different points of views and they all converge,” Raff said during a December press junket in Albuquerque. “Tim does that brilliantly.” Kring, who has had to switch from long-form, serialized narratives to a self-standing 10-episode miniseries, sees the binge-watching model as a guide for more traditional networks. “I think it turns out to be a very modern style of storytelling in programming,” he said. With him, Kring brought Heroes alum S.J. Clarkson to the project to do some directing; Raff himself directed six episodes.
Raff, who is also a novelist, wants to tell stories that have a beginning, a middle, and an end. “When I turned Prisoners of War into Homeland, that’s really the first time where the word ‘franchise’ played any kind of weight in my life,” Raff said. “Before that, when I was doing shows in Israel, the network would be like, ‘How many episodes do you think it will be?’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t know. Until the story dies?'” (Dig, originally slated for six episodes, was eventually upped to 10 during production.) Taking a more finite approach to the story has made Dig like a long movie in terms of production for Kring, who also sees value in a limited-run series. “When you tell somebody at the beginning that you’re doing this many episodes and it’s going to come to an end, I think it’s easier for an audience to invest in that.”
“They wanted to tell a story, not just about Jerusalem, which is this very, very small place that every civilization for the last thousands of years has sacrificed or slaughtered to take control of,” Isaacs said. “They wanted to tell about a particular tiny hill.” The contested lands in Dig are also, of course, a hot spot in real life. While the pilot was shot entirely in Jerusalem, production had to shut down and move shop in July when violence erupted in Gaza. “There’s a scene, I think it’s the fourth episode,” Pfeffer explained, “where I go into the apartment in Jerusalem, we shoot the interior with the conversation in New Mexico, and I come out of the apartment in Croatia.” For Raff, Dig is a chance for TV viewers to see the city in a new way. “I am in love with that city. It is a city that means everything to so many people around the world — so many people that, by the way, haven’t even been to Jerusalem,” Raff noted. “We wanted to bring [Jerusalem]’s tapestry of people and events to the American screen as they really are. I’m really excited about that.”
“The zeitgeist on this show is unbelievable,” Jerusalem-born Pfeffer said. “It baffles me how, since we started this show in May and now what has been going on… reality is catching up faster than you can imagine to these things that are happening on the show.” For those who look for Wikipedia-friendly shows, Dig will have plenty of mythology and real-life history to Google. “There is a lot of stuff out there,” Raff said. “It was a blessing. We could pick and choose what we wanted [from the research]. At the end of the story, a secret society started to form and a secret plan and conspiracy started to form. Then a lot of cool stuff that we wanted to fit in just didn’t fit in with that ideology anymore. But that’s what other seasons are for.”
Dig starts Thursday, Mar. 5, on USA at 10 pm. Will you be watching?
