TV week: Murder in 1930s Tel Aviv and ‘Checkout’ checks back in

To paraphrase a quote by poet Chaim Nachman Bialik, who spoke about how Israel would become a normal country when there were Jewish thieves and Jewish policemen, there also would need to be Jewish detectives, and a fascinating new documentary, Water Tower Murder, about the first detective in Tel Aviv, will be shown on Kan 11 on November 16, after the news. It will then become available on Kan.org.il.

Directed by Oded Farber and Daniel Najenson, the film tells the story of Najenson’s quest to learn the truth about David Tidhar, the Tel Aviv detective who was the subject of numerous popular detective stories but is little known today. 

In the mid-1920s, Tidhar began working as a private detective and was a famous figure in the city. It was a time of complex alliances and sometimes shady deals, as the city of Tel Aviv was developing fast. 

The film focuses on a case that Tidhar worked on in 1937: the murder of an engineer called Zwanger, for which there was no clear suspect. 

The documentary plays like an Israeli version of Chinatown, as Tidhar works to uncover a shady network of Tel Aviv’s movers and shakers, as well as an organized group of Nazis, which had branches around the country. 

Yes, some of the German Templars were sympathetic to the Nazis, and there were Jews who sought to make deals with the Nazi leadership to allow German Jews to leave for Palestine if they gave up their property.

Adolf Eichmann reportedly played a part in some of the negotiations. There are plots, counter-plots, and assassinations, in which the Haganah, the precursor to the IDF, may have played a key role. 

Najenson can’t answer all the questions raised by his investigation, but he tries.

Much of the film plays out in AI animation of live actors, with Najenson portraying Tidhar, Tali Sharon as Zwanger’s widow, and Yehezkel Lazarov, Amit Ulman, Miki Leon, and Omer Etzion portraying various suspects and witnesses. 

There are also interviews with historians and the few survivors who remember the protagonists, such as Zwanger’s granddaughters. Those interested in the history of the British Mandate period and anyone who likes a good mystery will enjoy this film.

THE STAFF and customers of a small-town supermarket, Shefa Issachar, are back in the new season of the sitcom Checkout, which is running on Tuesdays on Kan 11 at 10 p.m. and is also available on the Kan website. While the war continues, the supermarket workers haven’t changed, and the latest episode showcases the struggle faced by Kochava (Keren Mor), the wildly self-centered cashier, to get everyone she has wronged all year to forgive her before Yom Kippur. 

It’s a long list, but the real challenge comes with Amnon (Dov Navon), an eccentric and stubborn customer. The manager, Shira (Noa Koler), is still busy trying to lift everyone’s spirits in ways that drive them crazy.

A NEW three-part documentary series, Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar, will be shown on Hot 8 from November 17 to 19 at 9:15 p.m. and on Yes Doco on November 17 at 10 p.m., as well as on VOD on these networks. You might be forgiven for thinking, “What? Elizabeth Taylor again?” because an HBO movie on the late movie star was released last summer. 

That’s what I thought at first, but I ended up watching this one anyway. It’s about twice as long as the earlier documentary, and as Taylor herself would doubtlessly have agreed, sometimes more is more.

A great series 

The series has great clips of Taylor, her film roles, her husbands, and her children. 

Part of the draw here are interviews with members of Taylor’s family, including her son, granddaughter, and daughter-in-law, but it also tries to make Taylor relevant to younger viewers by lauding her as a feminist icon. 

While this is something of a stretch, perhaps some people would like to hear what reality TV star Kim Kardashian (who has never said anything I could remember five minutes later and doesn’t break her streak here) and Paris Jackson, Michael Jackson’s daughter, have to say about Taylor, but some of what the interviewees say should be taken with a grain (or a pound) of salt.

Yes, she negotiated a groundbreaking contract for $1 million for the epic Cleopatra in the early 1960s. But an Italian photographer who claims the term paparazzi was coined as the media mobbed Taylor and her co-star – and eventually her husband, Richard Burton – in Rome is false. 

Just check out the Fellini movie, La Dolce Vita, about an Italian reporter played by Marcello Mastroianni that predates Cleopatra by several years. The movie skirts over the unfeminist aspects of Taylor’s life with Burton, including the well-documented fact that he often beat her, and does not mention that they married and divorced twice.

The series doesn’t go into Taylor’s conversion to Judaism in 1959, following the death of her third husband, Mike Todd, who was Jewish, and around the time of her marriage to Jewish pop singer Eddie Fisher (Carrie Fisher’s father), or that she was reportedly barred from entering Egypt to film scenes for Cleopatra because of her religion.

But the series is unquestionably fun viewing for movie buffs, and the section on how Taylor pushed late US president Ronald Reagan to finally acknowledge the AIDS crisis and allocate more money for AIDS research shows how she used her fame to help people – something that celebrities often claim to want to do but few actually do.

TWO RECENT movies worth seeing have just become available on Apple TV+: Thelma and Between the Temples,  both starring veteran actresses in roles where they defy clichés about older characters.

Josh Margolin’s Thelma, which opened the Jerusalem Film Festival this year and played briefly in theaters, stars June Squibb as a grandmother who is scammed out of some of her savings. 

Although everyone tells her to forget about it, she is determined to get her money back. Richard Roundtree appears in the film as an old friend in one of his last roles.

Between the Temples by Nate Silver, which did not have an Israeli release at all for some odd reason, is the story of a depressed cantor (Jason Schwartzman) who reconnects with his childhood music teacher (Carol Kane of Taxi), who wants to have the bat mitzvah she missed out on. 

The two end up forming an unconventional bond, and the movie is an affectionate but sometimes dark look at American Jewish life.

It’s a rare leading role for Kane, who is an absolute gem. The soundtrack features decades-old Israeli pop songs from the likes of Arik Einstein and Matti Caspi, possibly the first-ever American film to feature them.