There is a lot coming up on Israeli television this week, notably the new season of Fauda on Yes, on May 18, and The Intern, a medical drama starring Niv Sultan of Tehran, which will begin running on Hot on May 19.
Another new Israeli series coming up is Finders Keepers from KAN 11, airing on May 17 and May 19, with more episodes following weekly.
It’s a black comedy/dramedy about three adult siblings who haven’t been close for years and meet up after their father dies to hear his will read.
They are all struggling financially and in just about every other way, and are played by Shai Avivi (Burning Man, Here We Are), Yael Sharoni (who played Yifat on Srugim), and Ofer Schechter (The 90s).
When they hear the will, they get a big surprise: Their father has left his apartment, his biggest asset, to someone they have never heard of, and, despite their bickering, they set out to find this mysterious beneficiary. Guy Koren and Erez Drigues created it.
BIG NEWS for fans of The Bear: the fifth and final season will be released on Disney+ on June 26, with the entire season dropping at once.
It’s refreshing that it will come out a year after season four, because premium cable series often go years between seasons. It’s been said that the series will focus on how the restaurant carries on after its founder and guiding light, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), leaves.
The Bear has been an uneven series, and I felt that seasons two and four were much better than the others.
Disney+ has just released a Bear prequel episode called “Gary,” starring Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Richie, a character who is alternately annoying and endearing, and Jon Bernthal as Mikey, Carmy’s brother, who is seen throughout The Bear in flashbacks because he committed suicide not long before the first season opens.
Bernthal is an amazing, very sexy actor whom many first got to know in The Walking Dead, so I was looking forward to seeing more of him, but this isn’t the showcase I was hoping for.
Mikey and Richie are two screwups who egg each other on, and without the framing of the restaurant and the rest of the cast, I didn’t get into their bromance.
Taking another look at 'Succession'
AS I’VE been working my way through the HBO Max library and rewatching such series as Entourage, The Wire, Big Love, and True Blood, I decided to take another look at a massively successful series that left me cold when it first came out, Succession.
My initial objection was that it was clearly based on Rupert Murdoch and his family, but that the characters were far less interesting than the Murdochs.
In a long New York Times article a couple of years ago, it was alleged that Murdoch’s children from his first and second marriages watched Succession for strategy tips, which piqued my interest in the series. I found the acting very engaging.
Jeremy Strong as the vulnerable, cerebral son who alternately challenges and kowtows to the narcissistic monster of a patriarch, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), has been rightly celebrated for his performance, as has Kieran Culkin as the Fredo Corleone of the Roy family.
I also enjoyed Alan Ruck, the distinctive actor who was in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, as another sibling.
The rest of the cast, which included Holly Hunter, Danny Huston, and Eric Bogosian, was excellent. Still, I kept thinking of how warm and cuddly Logan Roy was compared to the real Rupert Murdoch, and I lost interest in the often grim machinations and rivalries among the Roy family.
At the end of the day, this is a series where people spend most of their time looking sour and feeling miserable.
FANS OF the series Rivals will be delighted to know it is coming back to Disney+ on May 15, because it is a show about media-empire competition, as well as other brands of romantic and dramatic intrigue that are actually fun.
People seduce and betray each other with gusto, and, particularly because it is set in Britain in the 1980s, it hearkens back to the spirit of classic nighttime soap operas both in America and the UK.
The series is based on the bestselling novels by Jilly Cooper, who died last year, and everything about it is over-the-top: It embraces the era of big hair, big mouths, and big egos.
The second season picks up right where the first season left off – if you need a refresher, all the episodes are still online – with Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell), the posh, former Olympic show-jumper and MP, trying to create a new television station to challenge Tony Baddington (David Tennant), a ruthless magnate who is much more like Rupert Murdoch than Logan Roy.
All the main characters are back, including serious investigative journalist Declan (Alex Turner); Taggie (Bella Maclean) – O’Hara’s daughter, and a chef who is attracted to Rupert’s bad-boy charm, and whose innocence Rupert finds enticing.
Cameron (Nafessa Williams), an assertive African American television executive who comes to the UK and falls for Rupert, and Freddy Jones (Danny Dyer), an unassuming tech entrepreneur who is successful beyond his wildest dreams, will also return.
Sarah (Emily Atack), an unhappily married TV presenter with the biggest hair on the show, which is saying something, and many others, will also be returning characters.
I could describe the plot, but either you can get into a show like this, or you can’t. I find it the perfect escapist entertainment from start to finish, and there is so much going on that the plot turns are occasionally surprising.
There are quite a few funny scenes of classic bedroom farce situations. Many will enjoy the series as real estate porn, and it was filmed in several real historic mansions.
Others will marvel at the crazy ’80s fashions and the soundtrack that mixes now-classic pop tunes with operatic music that often plays during the revenge scenes.
David Tennant (Broadchurch, The Hack, Doctor Who), an actor who never met a character he couldn’t play brilliantly, is the standout as the cold-hearted media baron.