HBO - House of Saddam

Premieres December 7, 9pm


A detailed portrait of the inner workings of Saddam Hussein's family and his relationship with his closest advisors, House of Saddam illuminates Saddam's treacherous seventeen-year reign. As the series unfolds, Saddam's lust for power and his bloody means of achieving it give way to his efforts to escape capture after the start of the Iraqi War. Inside the house of Saddam there is a secret world of brutality, vengeance and deceit, where Saddam is the sun around which everything and everyone revolves. This is a study in dictatorship, an examination of the psychology of terror. This journey into the human psyche will reveal the immorality and corruption that unlimited and unchecked power can breed, but it will also reveal the resilience that was required to survive in this kind of world.



The impeccably sourced and researched four-part drama also illustrates Iraq's troubled relationship with the West – an intense and complex relationship that veered from flirtation to seduction and ultimately to hatred - and Saddam's megalomaniacal desire to control every facet of Iraqi life. With chilling accuracy, compelling characterizations, and resonant themes, this gripping mini-series tells the terrifying tale of Saddam's unchecked brutality and his enablers within Iraq and in the West who put political power above the best interests of Iraq's citizens.



House of Saddam is a drama about characters that ordered the deaths of thousands and caused devastating wars, but it is not dark and dreary. Its power comes from being a three dimensional portrayal of these figures. This intimate portrait, while not flinching from the seriousness of its subject will also examine its absurdity, and paint it with a blackly comic wit. This is a world where some behavior is so extreme, it borders on the comical.