Netflix adds a stream of new Israeli content

When Heroes Fly, Shtisel and more are now available with subtitles to users around the globe

When Heroes Fly Keshet (photo credit: NITAI NETZER/KESHET)
When Heroes Fly Keshet
(photo credit: NITAI NETZER/KESHET)
Over the past month, Netflix has quietly added a handful of new Israeli shows to its platform, broadcasting them around the globe in more than a dozen languages. Now, more than 130 million people can watch shows like When Heroes Fly, Shtisel, Hashoter Hatov and the film The Cakemaker.
On Thursday, the Keshet series When Heroes Fly became available on Netflix after considerable success at home. The show won the top prize at the Canneseries International Series Festival last year, and then received both acclaim and top ratings when it premiered in Israel. The show begins 10 years after the Second Lebanon War, depicting four friends and IDF veterans who still carry both physical and psychological scars. They are forced to reluctantly reunite to track down Yaeli – the sister of one and the ex-girlfriend of another – who they all believed was killed in an accident in Colombia years before.
In the last week of December, Netflix also added the cop comedy from Yes titled Hashoter Hatov (The Good Cop). The show, which premiered in Israel in 2015, features a cop who moves back in with his family after a breakup – and has to contend with their questionable behavior and potentially illegal ties. Netflix has kept the show’s transliterated title of Hashoter Hatov, likely to differentiate it from its English-language remake The Good Cop, which was based on the original Yes show. That version, which stars Tony Danza and Josh Groban as the father and son, hit Netflix last fall.
In mid-December, Netflix added two seasons of the buzzed-about Yes show Shtisel. The show features Akiva, a young haredi (ultra-Orthodox) man living in Jerusalem’s Mea She’arim neighborhood (played by Michael Aloni, also one of the stars of When Heroes Fly). His father wants him to follow a very certain path, but Akiva isn’t entirely sure he can follow along.
More than two years ago, Amazon announced it was picking up the show for a US remake titled Emmis, set in the ultra-Orthodox community of Brooklyn, but the series never progressed further.
And on January 1, Netflix also added an Israeli film – The Cakemaker – which was the country’s nomination this year for the foreign language Oscar award. The movie – which ultimately wasn’t nominated in the category – focuses on a young German baker who falls in love with a married Israeli man named Oren visiting Berlin. When Oren suddenly dies, the baker winds up in Jerusalem looking for closure – and finds himself growing closer to Oren’s widow.
So when you’ve finished watching Fauda and Mossad 101 on Netflix, you’ll have a whole host of new Hebrew content to stream.