A new Israeli drama series, The Truth, which debuts on Kan 11 on Mondays and Wednesdays at 9:45 p.m. starting on July 15, is a twisty crime drama inspired by the murder of 13-year-old Tair Rada in 2006 in Katzrin and the eventual acquittal of Roman Zadorov, a Ukrainian workman who served more than 10 years behind bars for the killing.

Set in Rosh Ha’ayin, it focuses on Raheli (Mor Dimri), a young police detective who investigates crimes that involve children and teens and who is haunted by visions of Yarden, a girl she knew as a teenager who was murdered under circumstances much like the Tair Rada case. 

The series opens on the day that Raheli’s father (Golan Azulai), a retired police investigator, is waiting to hear whether Ruby Deloya (Benny Avni), the man he helped convict for the murder, will be released from prison on the grounds that he was framed. The series moves back and forth between Raheli, her father, Deloya and his family, and another local family whose teen daughter has just gone missing.

To say more would reveal spoilers and, like the Rada case, the story has a great deal of suspense. Dimri gives a compelling performance as the rebellious, tormented young policewoman, who has to face her own trauma to solve her latest case. The entire cast is strong, with Yossi Marshek particularly good as the detective leading the investigation. The vibe of the series has an overarching bleakness, like a 70s movie where you know that even if justice is served in the end, there has been so much tragedy and loss along the way that it won’t matter much.

If you watch this series, you have to be ready to face graphic images of bodies and murder scenes, like those that were shown repeatedly in the coverage of the Rada case. But for those who can cope with this inherently disturbing storyline, there is a diverting mystery here. The series – written by Daphna Levin, best known for Euphoria and In Treatment (Betipul), among others, and Aurit Zamir, a producer of the recent series, The Man Who Wanted to Know and movies that include Delegation and The Future – has a wealth of talent in front of and behind the camera. It represents what Israeli television is best known for: Telling a gripping story, with memorable characters.

Challengers 

There are many reasons to feel sorry for young people in today’s digital, social media-dominated world, and my sense of pity for them intensified recently with the success of the movie Challengers, which was in theaters recently and is now available to stream on Apple TV+ and Cellcom TV, and will become available from the Yes movie store on July 24. Many twenty-somethings I know, and many more that I have read about online, think that this was a fun, sexy movie. If so, they have such a muted, muddled idea of what those adjectives mean that it’s sad.

You have probably read about Challengers, a supposedly risqué drama about a love triangle among three young, rising tennis stars, with Zendaya as Tashi, who is married to Art (Mike Faist). Tashi was once a top player, but one misstep caused a knee injury that completely derailed her career, and she acts as a manager and adviser to Art, one of the top men’s tennis players, who is making a comeback after his far less serious injury. To return to serious competition, he has to play his former best friend, Patrick (Josh O’Connor), who was once his rival for Tashi’s affections.

The movie moves clumsily between several time periods not that far apart, and to remember what year it is, you have to memorize their hair-dos. 

THE BIG scene that everyone talked about involves Tashi pushing them into an almost-threesome by having them sit on a bed with her, and instructing them to kiss each other if they want her. After a moment, they seem to be more into each other than into her, a plot thread that could have been interesting but which is dropped for most of the movie, and she doesn’t seem to be much into either of them and quickly walks out. The film tries to generate suspense about who will win Tashi in their love triangle, which will of course be whoever prevails in the big match between the two men.

I realize that this doesn’t sound like a bad premise for a movie. The bad news, though, is that, to steal a quote from the late New Yorker critic Pauline Kael, all the actors are “shockingly unsexy.” Zendaya has been celebrated all over the world for her beauty, and she was good in the TV series Euphoria (based on the Israeli series), but here she alternates between a pinched, sour expression and a blank one. She might have done better if the film were about her fury over losing her chance to be a champion, but that isn’t what this story is about. 

Mike Faist was good in the West Side Story remake, but here he joins Zendaya in projecting nothing but discontent and emptiness. Josh O’Connor was also much better as Prince Charles on The Crown than he is in Challengers, where he plays the most likable character, but that’s not saying much.

The movie refuses to actually end the suspense and cops out with an ambiguous ending that has provided the fodder for endless on-line discussions. The weak ending is emblematic of everything wrong with the film, just as this lifeless excuse for a romantic drama seems to embody so much of what is wrong with the movie industry. I think younger viewers have flocked to it because it is the rare movie that features non-superhero situations and emotions, i.e. is about human beings, and is also devoid of virtue-signaling and political messages. If only it were actually fun to watch.

A Family Affair 

Speaking of movies that are not as much fun as they should be, let’s turn next to Netflix’s A Family Affair, which stars Zac Efron as Chris, a spoiled movie star; Joey King (We Were the Lucky Ones) as his assistant, Zara; and Nicole Kidman as Brooke, her mother, who falls instantly and hopelessly in love with Chris, and he with her. To say the movie is predictable and formulaic is an understatement, and it pains me to note that it was written and directed by Richard LaGravenese, once one of the most interesting writers in Hollywood. He wrote Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King, with Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges, and wrote and directed Living Out Loud, starring Holly Hunter, Danny DeVito, and Queen Latifah – don’t you want to see it just from hearing the cast?

A Family Affair is not exactly bad so much as chronically uninvolving, and while the three actors do their best with the script, there is no suspense and, as with Challengers, no chemistry between the lovers. Kidman’s face is creepily unlined and she is rather pallid as the mother, a writer who we learn moved to Los Angeles to be the “next Joan Didion.” The one blessing here is that maybe this will inspire people to Google and perhaps even read Didion. A Pulitzer-Prize winning literary novelist and screenwriter whose success outshone her late husband’s, she now lives in a spectacular beach house, not that common for serious novelists, but we’re meant to just enjoy the real-estate porn.

King runs the gamut from childish to exasperated, which is all the script allows her to express, but the winner here is Efron, who has been a movie star for decades and seems extremely comfortable playing an entitled star, and the best lines are his demands for healthy snacks. 

It’s a bit better than the similarly themed The Idea of You starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine, currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video, mostly because the dialogue is occasionally funny. Both are the kind of movie that you don’t really need to pause if you get interrupted while you’re watching, because the plot is painted in such broad strokes, just like the generic network sitcoms of years ago.