The Mideasterner, TV’s Most Flexible Genre

Maybe it’s the demographics, the colonial relationships or the shorter flying times to London. Maybe it’s because British television producers and writers leave the house more. Whatever the reason, British TV drama has a more intimate, everyday connection with the turmoil of the Muslim world than its U.S. counterpart does.

That special relationship is on display in two conspiracy-minded new series, “Deep State” (beginning Sunday on Epix) and “Next of Kin” (Thursday on the streaming service Sundance Now). They both incorporate Middle Eastern and South Asian situations and locations in what are essentially British family melodramas — war and terrorism serve as both central themes and exotic flavoring.

They’re very different shows, though, demonstrating that the genre — the Mideasterner? — can be as flexible as the Western or science fiction. “Deep State” is a violent, border-hopping action thriller with a strong case of John le Carré envy, while “Next of Kin” is an earnest, tightly focused story about the travails of an Anglo-Pakistani family.

They’re also distinguished by central performers any series would be happy to have. On “Deep State,” Mark Strong brings his strong-and-silent charisma to the role of a former spy whose family — two families, actually — becomes collateral damage in a conspiracy that stretches from the CIA to MI6 to the Iranian power grid.

In “Next of Kin,” the equally riveting Archie Panjabi plays a character far removed from her smoothly lethal Kalinda on “The Good Wife.” She’s an immigrant doctor and a mother in London, a trusting type who gets an education in the realities of geopolitics when her nephew turns up in Pakistan and is connected to terror attacks.

“Deep State” is the more superficially entertaining and predictable of the two, combining elements of the “Homeland"-style vast-conspiracy story and Liam Neeson’s avenging-father films. The familiar sights and sounds — the arrogance and avarice of Americans, the inevitable presence of sharp objects on desktops during fights to the death — are presented with a businesslike restraint that makes them reasonably credible. The show’s title could give the misleading impression that the series is about current conflicts in the U.S. political arena, but “Deep State” is a solidly British show in which the United States plays its traditional role of the irritating and menacing outsider. The script does, however, make references to the unnamed U.S. president as a “child who can’t make up his own mind” and a man who “tweets like a teenage girl.”

Family is the plot armature of “Deep State” — Strong’s former agent, retired to an idyllic spread in the Pyrenees, is forced to pick up his gun and fingernail-pulling pliers because his children are threatened, which justifies his own retributive violence. In “Next of Kin,” family is the true subject, as we see the extended clan led by Panjabi’s character torn apart by forces they’ve always been aware of but never understood.

Created by the husband-and-wife team Paul Rutman (“Indian Summers”) and Natasha Narayan, “Next of Kin” incorporates typical story lines of the immigrant family drama — a confused and wayward son, a daughter who’s afraid to come out, a white husband who feels unaccepted — but turns the pressure up by putting a terrorist investigation at the center of the story. Panjabi carries off a delicate task, delineating motives and keeping our sympathy, as her character alternately rebels against and cooperates with the British agents tracking her nephew.

“Deep State” and “Next of Kin” both offer mystery and suspense, and you could be drawn to either out of a taste for international intrigue tied to current events. For gunfire, cynicism and a constant build toward world-shaking revelations, go with “Deep State.” For uncomfortable conversations, melancholy and a constant tightening of the narrative toward very personal consequences, go with “Next of Kin.” Either way, you can’t go wrong with Strong or Panjabi.