High Value Target puts a CIA analyst face-to-face with Saddam Hussein

📺 What if years of losing yourself in intelligence files and reports don’t prove enough to understand a man like Saddam Hussein? High Value Target: The Hunt for Saddam — based on CIA analyst John Nixon’s memoir Debriefing the President — picks up after the capture of the former Iraqi president in December 2003, placing Nixon (portrayed by Joel Kinnaman of For All Mankind fame) in an uncomfortable position: the subject he has spent years analyzing as a collection of data and reports is now sitting across from him in an interrogation room. What follows is less a procedural and more a sustained psychological standoff.

The plot: Following the American invasion, Nixon joins US teams hunting for Saddam Hussein (Waleed Zuaiter). Against a backdrop of military operations and mounting intelligence and political pressure, the series tracks the search in parallel with the debate around weapons of mass destruction intelligence, before shifting its focus to a series of interrogation sessions that become the heart of the show.

What we liked: The interrogation scenes are where the series earns itself — tension built through dialogue, through what each man chooses to reveal or withhold, and through the rhythm of the exchange. Zuaiter plays Saddam with a restraint that makes him feel in control of the encounter even as a prisoner. Kinnaman, meanwhile, gives Nixon room to change across sessions, the gap widening between the mental image he carried and the man in front of him.

The strength of these scenes is that they don’t need action or spectacle to generate tension — a single look, an evasive answer, a beat of silence does the work. The series found its own language in that space, wagering on a character-reading contest rather than movement. The use of archival footage woven into the drama also works well, grounding the story in historical reality and giving the events a layer of credibility.

What we didn’t like: Eight episodes isn’t a long run, but the series takes longer than it should to reach the confrontation that is its entire reason for existing — Saddam doesn’t appear until episode four. The political and historical context needs space, but the script sometimes leans on voiceover to deliver information that could have emerged through the events themselves. The action sequences and chase scenes are noticeably weaker than the interrogation scenes and don't add the same dramatic depth.

Our verdict: The series has a genuinely strong dramatic premise and delivers on that premise in the interrogation room — tense, dialogue-driven, and built on reading the other person. If you’re drawn to the behind-closed-doors side of history, it’s worth your time. Just don’t expect many surprises.

WHERE TO WATCH IT- The series is streaming exclusively on WatchIt. Watch the trailer on YouTube (watch, runtime: 1:59).