SOMEDAY soon, there will be a movie, perhaps several movies, about the killing of Osama bin Laden. Here is what the movie(s) will show: nefarious bearded men plotting in tight rooms (soundtrack: tabla and ululations), the crashing of the Twin Towers (anguished minor chords), the dispatch of troops to faraway deserts (martial drums and trumpets), firefights in Iraq, firefights in Afghanistan, the capture of some mid-ranking al-Qaeda fighters followed, perhaps, by some graphic waterboarding that leads to the one piece of essential information (you know, to keep torture ambiguous—we depict, you decide), a firefight in a compound, all tight shots and quick cuts, that ends with the killing of you-know-who.

Here is what the movie will not show: the hours, days, weeks and months of painstaking, tedious analysis that actually led to Osama bin Laden's death. No soundtrack other than the hum of fluorescent light and the burble of guts fed with too much bad coffee and too little food. For the death of bin Laden was the triumph not of Jack Bauer, but of Lester Freamon. The information that led to bin Laden's death does not appear to have been water-boarded out of anyone. For those poor souls who have not memorised all five seasons of "The Wire", Mr Freamon is a Baltimore detective with a gift for the paper trail. No guns, no street work, just document upon document, brick by brick of patient, steady analysis. SEAL Team Six was on the ground, and of course they deserve respect and admiration, but let's spare a thought too for the office work that put them there.

The worthwhile, boring, essential parts of war and life do not make good television. They do not even make good narrative: David Foster Wallace's posthumous novel tries to sanctify boredom (and if I ever manage to slog my way past page 56 I'll let you know if it succeeds; he's a great writer, but come on, I'm only human, I have my narrative needs too), but otherwise writers and filmmakers wisely steer clear of the subject. People standing around tables in offices sorting documents into files or making minute adjustments to photographs does not make for compelling reading or watching. But make no mistake, they are the ones who put the SEALs in that compound.