Tragically it wasn’t my turn to review when Channel 5’s groundbreaking Anne Boleyn came out so you’ll never find out what my totally unpredictable critique might have said.
As you know, I have previously been mad for all things Israeli and one of my plans had been to go there with my brother Dick and make a fun documentary where we train with the IDF, practise in one of those urban-warfare shooting ranges, learn krav maga, eat lots of Ottolenghi-type food, wallow in the Dead Sea, etc. But I’m afraid I’ve rather gone off Netanyahu’s vax tyranny and just can’t root for Israel in the way I once did. Still, this doesn’t seem to have put me off its TV shows, yet. I’ve just started getting in to Shtisel and the new cop thriller Black Space isn’t half bad either.
Shtisel is like Midsomer Murders only without the murders and with broad-brimmed black hats
Guri Alfi stars as Rami Davidi, a hard-bitten, no-nonsense cop whose unique quirk is that he has an infected glass eye. Sometimes you wish it were otherwise — that he just drove an old Jag and liked opera and a pint, say — because every now and then you wince as his oculist tells him he needs to rest or his socket (thankfully off camera) will start to suppurate. On the whole, though, it doesn’t seem to render him too incapable of spotting clues others have missed, chasing fugitives, beating people up, then getting told by his long-suffering bosses that he has really gone too far this time.
So yes, it’s a bit clichéed. But because it’s only Israeli TV-clichéed rather than UK or US TV-clichéed, it’s much more bearable. For example, though Davidi has a hot, young female sidekick Noga Ruso (Assi Levy), she greets his sexism and machismo with amused tolerance, rather than treating them as disgusting male traits that need to be eradicated.
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