The Roush Review

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The Hot Zone: Anthrax

A docudrama revisits the post-9/11 manhunt to stop a terror threat

LIMITED SERIES PREMIERE

Sunday–Tuesday, Nov. 28–30, 9/8c, National Geographic

“OUR NATION IS gripped with fear,” declares news anchor Tom Brokaw (a mannered impersonation by Harry Hamlin) as anthrax-laced letters are sent to media outlets, including NBC, in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Office workers and unsuspecting postal employees from Florida to the Northeast are among the early victims of the airborne menace.

I remember the panic well. At the time, we occupied, which received one of the poisoned envelopes. Unfortunately, the six-hour (over three nights) procedural docudrama rarely works up more than a lukewarm head of tension as it depicts the dogged investigation by FBI agents who tend to talk in terse headline-speak. “We don’t need just the smoking gun. We need the bullet,” barks Dylan Baker as an FBI bureaucrat particularly prone to cliché.