Having trouble sleeping lately because missiles fired from Iran keep waking you up?
KAN 11, Israel's national broadcaster, can’t help you sleep, but if you’re wide awake at midnight, you improve your mood by watching episodes of the hit series, Tehran, which will be replayed each night following the news magazine show, From the Other Side with Guy Zohar, at around midnight.
The series, which was produced by KAN and Apple TV+ (where all the episodes are available with English subtitles), won an International Emmy for Best Drama series and shows the Iranian regime getting its butt kicked by the heroic, gorgeous Mossad agent Tamar Rabinyan (Niv Sultan).
Tamar isn’t just brave, she’s also a cyber genius who can hack into any computer. She gets into Iran in a particularly ingenious and nerve-wracking sequence in the first episode, and once she’s there, she has to figure out how to take down the Iranian air defenses long enough so that the Israeli air force can attack the nuclear program.
A rebel at heart, she often finds herself at odds with her Mossad handlers, who have their own ideas about how she should handle the reality on the ground. Meanwhile, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), led by the evil but brilliant Faraz (Shaun Toub), is on her trail and getting closer.
Tehran delves into milieu of Iranian society
In each season, she gets involved in a different milieu of Iranian society, and you see how ordinary citizens survive the repressive regime, which gives the series more depth than a conventional spy series.
In the first season, she infiltrates the student dissident movement. In the second, she finds her way into the high life of the elites and hangs out in a country club with the spoiled children of the wealthy generals. In the third season, she takes refuge in a women’s center and ends up helping them get what they need to care for the vulnerable women fleeing abusive husbands.
Two major international guest stars have appeared on the series: Glenn Close, who played an expat psychologist in season two, and Hugh Laurie, who portrays an ornery nuclear weapons inspector in season three. The series also features some of the best actors from the Iranian diaspora, including Toub, Navid Negahban (Homeland, Aladdin), and Shila Ommi, who plays Faraz’s wife.
Israeli stars who appear in the series include Sasson Gabay, Menashe Noy, and Liraz Charhi.
The series was created by Moshe Zonder, Dana Eden (who was tragically found dead during the filming of the fourth season in Athens last month), and Maor Cohen, along with Danny Sirkin and Omri Shenhar. Eden and Shula Spiegel executive-produced the series.
The next time you find yourself in the bomb shelter listening to the booms of missile interceptions, you can look forward to a midnight rendezvous with Tamar to watch her take down the regime, one creepy general at a time.