Borders is a series about a young border policeman originally released on Hot in Israel from September-November 2023, and given its timing just as the war broke out, it’s likely it did not get as much attention as it would have otherwise. But now viewers here have a chance to take a second look, since it was recently added to Netflix, although it has only Hebrew titles.
The acting is excellent, to the point where you might think that some of the main cast are non-professionals essentially playing themselves, but this is not the case.
The leads include Ben Sultan, the brother of Tehran star Niv Sultan, as Avi, the hero; Moris Cohen as a gangster Avi knows from Bat Yam, where he grew up; Shalom Michaelshwilli, known for stand-up and comedies such as Saving Shuli, as the tough commander who may or may not turn out to have a heart of gold; and musician Shlomi Shabat as Avi’s straight-arrow father who owns a kiosk.
The series was created and directed by Meni Yaish, who is known for movies that explore the gritty underside of Israeli crime and poverty, such as God’s Neighbors, about young men drawn to an extremist religious group in a poor section of Bat Yam, and Our Father, about a tough doorman at a Tel Aviv club who is drawn into a life of crime.
His movies and now Borders are all extremely violent, and while that violence is an integral part of each story, it makes for difficult viewing. A series like The Wire looks almost like a Disney film by comparison.
The series opens as Avi ignores his father’s warnings to stay away from local criminals and gets involved with a gang fight between his guys and a tough Arab gang from Jaffa who has stolen his motorcycle. Somehow, after getting mixed up in all this, he is allowed to join the border police, but his impulsivity continues to get him into trouble there.
Nisim (Moris Cohen), the gangster who managed to get him out of real trouble after the motorcycle incident, is thrilled about Avi joining the border police, telling him, “This isn’t the army, it’s the border police, there are options.”
But Yoram Versano (Shalom Michaelshwilli), Avi’s commander, who is kind of a tough Lou Gossett-like taskmaster from An Officer and a Gentleman to Avi’s Richard Gere, lays out the border policeman’s credo: “To be in the border police means you’re not a soldier or a police officer.
To be in the Border Police means you’re a warrior. And to be a warrior, you have to be a human being.” But being a human being turns out to be more complicated than you might imagine, given all the pressures and temptations, and Versano warns him, “Welcome to your hell and my heaven.” The flawed characters around him aren’t the best role models as Avi tries to figure out what path to take.
THOSE WHO have not yet seen the third episode of the new season of Tehran, which just aired on Kan 11, and which can still be seen on kan.org.il, will want to skip this next section for now. The episode opens in one of the scariest places anyone can be right now: a jail for Iranian women who have run afoul of the Islamic morality police.
Tamar has been hauled in because she impulsively came to the rescue of a woman on the street she saw being dragged off. Mossad agent Tamar Rabinyan (Niv Sultan) is a James Bond-like figure in most circumstances, generally fighting off thug after thug, but here even 007 himself would be humbled by the weight and power of this regime. She is put into a room with many other women and tries to get help for the woman she jumped in to assist, who was severely beaten and may be dying.
Every time Tamar speaks to the officials in charge there, pleading for the woman to get medical attention, she is threatened with harm herself. Any normal being would be cowed, but Tamar continues to fight and scheme. It’s a terrifying glimpse into the system, run by police who regularly beat, rape, and kill women for not covering their hair properly.
The series makes it very clear that the rest of the women arrested with Tamar will not fare as well as she does. This is one of the first dramatic depictions of what Iranian women have suffered since the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in police custody sparked protests all over Iran.
Another major storyline in the third episode is about the continuing troubles of UN nuclear inspector Eric Peterson (Hugh Laurie) who gets arrested and charged with placing a surveillance device in the nuclear facility. He is angry and uncooperative, although he does offer to admit his guilt if it will spare the others on his team from being held.
But at the very end of the episode, we get this season’s first major twist: Peterson is actually working with the Iranians, to help them build a nuclear bomb. His arrest was apparently just a ruse to provide a cover for getting him away from his team. The question of why he has chosen this path will likely be answered in next week’s episode.
Although this season of Tehran has been getting great reviews in Israel, Apple TV+ has still not announced when it will be released around the world.
If you’re interested in the full 60 Minutes segment in which Lesley Stahl interviews former Mossad agents about Hezbollah’s exploding beepers, you can see that on Cellcom TV. 60 Minutes runs regularly in Israel on Cellcom.
IT’S ALWAYS nice to see Ben Stiller playing a frazzled everyman, but I found myself wishing that Nutcrackers, his new holiday movie on Disney+, was a little better. It was directed by David Gordon Green, the ultimate hipster director known for the stoner comedy Pineapple Express, as well as the TV series, Vice Principals and Red Oaks, and it seemed like the two of them were born to work together.
But Nutcrackers is a by-the-numbers story, too carefully designed to be cute and endearing. Stiller plays Michael, a workaholic executive from Chicago called away from finishing a big real estate deal to care for his four adorable nephews in rural Ohio who have been left orphaned after his sister and brother-in-law were killed in a car crash. A foster family was supposed to adopt them, but that fell through and you can set your watch by various plot twists that end up convincing Michael to make room in his heart for them.
The boys are played by real brothers and they look like the boy band, Hanson, plus one. Linda Cardellini of Freaks and Geeks is the beautiful, loving social worker who convinces Michael he can’t ignore these rascals. If you would like to see Stiller in something a little edgier, Disney+ also has Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, in which he plays a tense, widowed dad in a family of wonderful eccentrics that also stars Gene Hackman, the Wilson brothers (Luke and Owen), Gwyneth Paltrow, and Anjelica Huston.
Israeli TV excelling in other genres, too
THE NEW black comedy, Laid, which just started running on Hot VOD, Next TV, Yes VOD, and Sting+, is an odd mixture of a saga of a 30-something woman, Ruby (Stephanie Hsu), who has never been able to get it together in the relationship department, which quickly becomes a horror film when it turns out all her exes are dying, one by one.
At first, it just seems like a sad twist of fate when her first college boyfriend is killed in an accident, but when the bodies keep piling up, she realizes it’s not them, it’s her. Her best friend is played by Zosia Mamet, who is best known as Shoshanna in Girls and who happens to be David Mamet’s daughter. The horror angle was just getting started at the end of the first episode, which was released to the press, so it’s hard to judge how well it will work as it goes on.