The Telegraph is reporting that the recent portral of Beirut in the second season of Showtime’s breakout drama Homeland, has made Lebanese officials less than pleased.
In the season’s second episode, titled “Beirut is Back”, audiences tuned in to see Carrie Mattheson, played by Claire Danes, and her CIA cohorts chase terrorists through the dirty and hazardous alley ways of a ramshackle city.
Fady Abboud, Lebanon’s minister of tourism, who has spent a small fortune trying to revive the country’s reputation as the Paris of the Middle East, expressed outrage at the “serious misrepresentation” of the city.
“We are following the case legally. I raised this at the cabinet meeting and the president asked the minister for justice and the minister of communications to see what can be done,” said Mr Abboud.
“I am calling on all young Lebanese adults to do what they need to do; to write blogs, to call the BBC and CNN to try to raise awareness that Beirut is not a city of Kalashnikov and war.”
The areas referenced in the episode are more aptly compared to Rodeo Drive than to an all out war zone, and the insult is compunded by the fact that the shows makers filmed the episode in Israel, a country with whom Lebanon is at war.
Showtime has not made any comments thus far.
