This month marks 20 years since Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip, and there are new movies and series about this event, in addition to the previously released documentary series, Where Were You During the Disengagement? on Kan.
Kan announced that beginning on August 25, it will show the first drama series about this topic, Disengagement, starring Amos Tamam (The Best Worst Thing and Manayek). The series was created by the team behind the beloved Modern Orthodox singles series Srugim, Eliezer “Laizy” Shapira and Hava Divon.
Inspired by real people, Disengagement follows an IDF commander charged with evacuating Jewish settlers from Gush Katif in Gaza, Brig.-Gen. Shiloh Mazeh (Tamam). Mazeh, who is Modern Orthodox, finds himself pitted against his community and his family. His wife (Dina Sanderson), opposes the disengagement, his sister (Shani Klein) and her family live in Gush Katif, while his son Lavi (Ido Elieli), feels at home on the beaches there. It mirrors the conflicts many faced during that summer two decades ago.
A documentary film, We, the People of Gush Katif by Ayelet Heller, which is available on Hot VOD and Next TV, examines the experiences of the Gush Katif residents who had to leave, through home documentary footage taken at the time of the disengagement and in the first years afterward. It also features emotional interviews done this year, in which those who left look back at the experience.
Outrageous – Hot, Next, Yes
Outrageous, the new series about the Mitford sisters, is on Hot VOD, Next TV, Yes VOD, and Yes Binge, and will run on Hot Drama on Mondays at 10 p.m. starting on August 18. It’s entertaining – the first two episodes that were released to the press often play like a cross between Brideshead Revisited and The Royal Tenenbaums – but it makes the fact that two of the sisters embraced fascism and Nazism seem like a cute quirk.
For those who don’t know the true story of one of Britain’s most bizarre families, here’s a little background. The six Mitford sisters (and one brother) were born to an eccentric, impoverished, aristocratic father (James Purefoy, who played Marc Antony in Rome) and his more practical wife (Anna Chancellor, whom fans of Four Weddings and a Funeral will recognize as one of Hugh Grant’s brides), who wanted to see her daughters marry well.
Two of them, Nancy (Bessie Smith, who narrates the series and who was in Bridgerton) and Jessica (Zoe Brough), became well-known writers. Jessica also became a Communist and was called the “red sheep” of the family.
But Unity (Shannon Watson) and Diana (Joanna Vanderham) literally fell in love with Adolf Hitler (Paul Giddings) and British fascist leader Oswald Mosley (Joshua Sasse), respectively. Hitler is not introduced as a character in the first two episodes, although Unity, entranced by what she has seen of British fascism, does go to Germany with Diana to attend the Nuremberg rally and is instantly star-struck. She talks about him breathlessly, as if he was a rock star and she an aspiring groupie.
Mosley is introduced early on, and he is portrayed as a dashing womanizer who dazzles Diana, who was married to the heir to the Guinness fortune but who left her husband for him. This scandal made her into a tabloid celebrity, and she inspired a character in Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies.
The producers, who include one of Mosley’s great-grandsons, rely on our knowledge of history for us to be reviled by the antisemitic Mosley in these early episodes. But his charm is front and center and we don’t see or hear any of his hateful, extremist rhetoric. He is portrayed as an opportunistic politician, not far off from the Rex Mottram character in Brideshead.
Obviously, sanitizing fascism is disturbing, and I’m curious but apprehensive to see how Hitler is presented as a character in the rest of the season. If you know the family’s full history, it’s hard not to be distracted by this aspect, but the series is also intermittently diverting as we follow Nancy’s romantic mishaps and the oddly feral behavior of the younger sisters, who never attended school – their father didn’t see the point in educating girls.
The fashion and production design are exquisite, and I hope viewers are not just lulled by the gorgeous costumes and sets into finding Mosley an attractive figure.
Wilder and Bogart documentaries – Yes Docu
YES Docu is featuring Hollywood documentaries this month, and film buffs will love them. They include Remembering Gene Wilder, an affectionate look at the quirky comic genius, featuring interviews with his family and many of the directors and comedians he collaborated with, including Mel Brooks.
There’s also a new Humphrey Bogart documentary, Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes. Co-produced by Stephen Bogart, the actor’s son with his fourth and final wife, Lauren Bacall, it is an extremely detailed portrayal of the elder Bogart’s life. We learn how he grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the son of two successful, self-absorbed parents – a doctor and a commercial illustrator.
His career floundered for years while he was cast as juveniles, but eventually he hit his stride playing tough guys. Along the way, he married and divorced three actresses. His third marriage, to Mayo Methot, was especially volatile, with the two of them frequently fighting, and Methot shooting at him in drunken rages.
But when he met Bacall, who was born Betty Perske, a Jewish model from Brooklyn less than half his age, he found the perfect mate, a self-assured woman who put her career on the back burner for him. The film is filled with home movies and rare snapshots as it paints an in-depth portrait of the man behind the myth. But it gives short shrift to his acting, concentrating on just a few roles and using clips from To Have and Have Not, Key Largo, The Big Sleep, and other classics without clearly identifying them, for some odd reason. Still, Bogey fans will definitely want to see it.
Only Murders in the Building – Disney+
Disney+ just released the trailer for the fifth season of Only Murders in the Building, which will begin streaming on September 9, and it looks to be the most star-studded lineup yet. Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez will be returning as the mismatched but effective amateur sleuths and podcast creators who solve crimes in their creepy Manhattan apartment building, and Meryl Streep will be returning as Short’s love interest.
Additions to the cast include Christoph Waltz, Renee Zellweger, Bobby Cannavale, Dianne Wiest, Jermaine Fowler, Tea Leoni, Logan Lerman, Keegan-Michael Key, and Beanie Feldstein.
The new season will revolve around billionaires getting involved in the building’s affairs, as well as gangsters. Each season of this series has been more fun than the last, and with this cast, that’s likely to continue.