‘Night Therapy’s stars dazzle, while we wait for ‘The Bear’

The addictive new series from Yes, Night Therapy, has just become available on YesVOD, Sting+, and the Yes Israeli channel.

It combines elements of the groundbreaking Israeli drama from almost two decades ago, Betipul (which has been remade around the world as In Treatment and In Therapy), and a more conventional show.

There is a lot going on in Night Therapy, and sometimes it feels like too much, but the series is elevated by stellar performances by some of Israel’s top actors, including Yousef “Joe” Sweid in the lead and Shira Haas and Yaakov Zada Daniel in supporting roles.

It tells the story of Louie (Sweid), a Tel Aviv psychologist who is trying to pick up the pieces of his life following the suicide of his wife. He can barely take care of himself, let alone his teen son and younger daughter, and his sister, Mira (Lucy Ayoub), who is pregnant and estranged from her boyfriend, comes to help.

Louie suffers from insomnia and feels most comfortable at night, so he shifts to a nocturnal schedule completely. This means he takes on a new set of patients.

One, Noam (Yaron Brovinsky), is a brusque emergency room doctor who has been sent to therapy after a patient he was treating killed a nurse.

The second is Yasmine (Haas), a computer genius who seems to be on the autism spectrum and who is navigating her first romantic relationship, although it’s a virtual reality one with a fellow video gamer she has never.

On other nights, he sees Effi (Tomer Yosef), a drug dealer who can’t make a commitment to his girlfriend, or get out of his life of crime.

The final patient introduced in the first four episodes that were released to the press is Simon-Tov (Zada Daniel), a suicidal ultra-Orthodox man whose family has rejected him because of his mental illness.

Even though Louie spends almost all his time either at home or in his clinic, the series introduces two possible love interests for him early on: Noga (Dana Ivgy), a sweet movie buff who works in an all-night grocery, and more briefly, a dance therapist (Lena Fraifeld), who rents out Louie’s office during the day.

Still tormented by his wife’s suicide, he finds her therapist and threatens to have his license revoked for malpractice, intimating that his relationship with her involved boundary violations.

This look at a troubled therapist invites comparisons with Betipul, but that show had a simple and revolutionary concept that made it so intense that it has been remade in almost every country around the world.

It aired five days a week, and four episodes would show a different session with a single patient, aired on consecutive nights, while on the fifth night the therapist would meet his supervisor and essentially become a patient. Each season, the therapist remained the same, while most of the patients changed.

Assi Dayan had one of the greatest roles in his long career as the therapist, while the patients featured a who’s who of Israel’s top actors, among them Lior Ashkenazi, Ayelet Zurer, Alma Zack, Rami Heuberger, and, as the therapist’s supervisor, Gila Almagor.

Perhaps it’s unfair to compare Night Therapy to Betipul, because it is trying to achieve something different, but at the same time it does bring back memories of that groundbreaking earlier show, which showed how a simple conversation between two people in a room can be so dramatic.

Night Therapy is a drama about the life of a therapist, as well as about therapy itself, and Sweid, one of Israel’s finest actors, gets the role he has long deserved.

He has a likable quality, the kind of charm where you immediately root for him even before you understand what’s going on, to paraphrase Albert Camus’s famous phrase.

It has been nearly 20 years since Sweid starred in Eytan Fox’s The Bubble, a movie about a gay Palestinian who tries to live in Tel Aviv, and nine years since he appeared in the title role on The Writer, a series by Sayed Kashua about an Arab writer in Israel.

Sweid is a Christian Arab born in Haifa, and Louie on the series is also an Arab. Although he is fully integrated into Israeli society and speaks with his children in Hebrew, with his sister he speaks Arabic.

I was curious as to whether his Arab identity would be the focus of drama on the show, but in the first four episodes, it is a muted issue, although perhaps it will become more important later on.

The scenes between Louie and Mira have a relaxed quality, as if they are sharing a secret with each other, and I would guess most audiences abroad will not realize when characters speak Hebrew and when they are talking in Arabic.

The supporting cast is excellent, but two actors stand out. One is Zada Daniel, who is so good and so different in the many roles he plays that he tends to get taken for granted. I just saw him portray a narcissistic writer in the movie Hila, and of course he is probably best known for his role as Eli on Fauda, but here he is completely credible as a slightly older Orthodox man, trying and failing to mask his depression.

The other standout, not surprisingly, is Haas, best known for Shtisel and Unorthodox, who has already won an award for this role, the Jury Special Prize at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival. It’s a showy role, that of an awkward autistic savant, but she plays down the shtick and plays up the depth behind the character, and, as always, she is riveting.

The series is full of stylistic flourishes, especially alt-rock songs that play when Louie is on his bike at night, such as a Hebrew translation of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.”

While all the ingredients are good, the series suffers from the profusion of plots, and just when you are getting into one storyline, another one is introduced. But it has passed the most important test of quality: I’m looking forward to the next episodes.

The Bear is back

THE BEAR is back – but in the US, not in Israel yet, not until July 17 on Disney+.

Fans have been waiting eagerly for the third season for about a year, a time during which the show has won many Emmys and other awards.

If somehow you have missed out on the hype, it’s the story of Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), a master chef who returns home to his family sandwich joint in Chicago, after his charismatic brother’s suicide.

At its core, it’s about coping with a dysfunctional family and finding yourself through creative work, and it really came together in a magical second season, which made “Yes, chef!” into a catchphrase all over the world.

First, the bad news: The reviews for season three have not been good, with critics lamenting that the show, which is now about Carmy opening a fine-dining restaurant, has lost its magic from previous seasons.

Now the good news: Die-hard fans of the series have so much affection for the characters that they may not care.

Two episodes have received the most positive press. One is “Napkins,” which was directed by Ayo Edebiri, who plays Sydney and tells the backstory of Tina (Liza Colon-Zayas), the sometimes confrontational cook who has clearly overcome much adversity. The second is “Ice Chips,” in which Carmy’s sister, Natalie (Abby Elliott), gives birth accompanied by her unhinged mother (Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis), the only person she could reach when she went into labor.

Another Oscar winner, Olivia Colman, is back in her role as chef Terry, who runs the restaurant where Carmy trained, and there are many new characters to look forward to getting to know as well.