# The Looming Tower (2018)

> A dramatized account of the CIA and FBI rivalry that let al-Qaeda's rise go unchecked until the 9/11 attacks.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/61833

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 10
- Episode runtime: 50 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama, history
- Created by: Lawrence Wright, Dan Futterman, Alex Gibney
- Network: Hulu
- Cast: Jeff Daniels, Tahar Rahim, Wrenn Schmidt, Bill Camp, Louis Cancelmi, Virginia Kull, Ella Rae Peck, Sullivan Jones
- TMDB rating: 8.0/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6474236/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: dense
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: sober, tense, grim, intelligent

## What critics say

Viewers praise The Looming Tower as a complex, intelligent and sobering dramatization of the intelligence failures before 9/11.

## Synopsis

The Looming Tower is an American limited series created by Lawrence Wright, Dan Futterman and Alex Gibney for Hulu. Across ten fifty-minute episodes, it dramatizes the rivalry between the CIA and the FBI as Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda grow into a global threat. Jeff Daniels plays FBI counterterrorism agent John O'Neill, whose relentless pursuit of the group collides with the bureaucratic caution of his peers, while Tahar Rahim plays fellow agent Ali Soufan, who works to chase leads that his superiors keep dismissing. Michael Stuhlbarg appears as CIA official Richard Clarke, and Peter Sarsgaard joins the cast in a supporting role. The engine of the show is the slow accumulation of intercepted messages, stalled warrants, and turf fights between agencies that refuse to share what they know. Each episode builds the escalating dread of a threat that everyone can see but no one can stop. Its tone is sober, intelligent and grim, with a restrained atmosphere of mounting unease. Set in the late 1990s and early 2000s across New York, Washington and the Middle East, the series is a serious true events drama that will appeal to viewers of prestige historical television. Fans of The Wire, Chernobyl and Zero Dark Thirty will find resonance in its procedural realism and its portrait of institutional failure.

## Shows like The Looming Tower

- [Manhunt (2017)](https://ember.film/tv/63289)
- [Sleeper Cell (2005)](https://ember.film/tv/2289)
- [Zero Day (2025)](https://ember.film/tv/136517)
- [The Company (2007)](https://ember.film/tv/5040)
- [Spy City (2020)](https://ember.film/tv/94860)
- [The Comey Rule (2020)](https://ember.film/tv/87743)
- [Homeland (2011)](https://ember.film/tv/1323)
- [The Agency: Central Intelligence (2024)](https://ember.film/tv/139632)
- [Pine Gap (2018)](https://ember.film/tv/70459)
- [The Enemy Within (2019)](https://ember.film/tv/70061)

---

Site overview: https://ember.film/llms.txt